Descent
by The Dark Scribbler
Summary: Something's coming to San Francisco... and it's not pretty. Slightly AU. Please R&R! Chapter 14 up. COMPLETE!
1. Advent

Okay, okay, disclaimers. I don't own the rights to this, blah, blah, blah, I'm just taking the characters out for a little test drive, honest. Would I lie to you?  
  
bDemonesqueb  
  
"Diabolus... Mortiacus..." The voice was deep and guttural, speaking in a harsh form of Latin that had died out centuries before. Underlain with the words came the occasional groan of pain, as if something was being pressed down on the cloaked and hooded figure that was kneeling on the floor in the empty room, empty apart from the complicated pictogram on the floor, the junctions of what looked like red chalk studded with lighted candles.  
  
A new sound drifted downwards into the room, a low chime that bounced off the walls and resonated in the air, sound building upon sound until the floor shook. The figure completed the chant and then slowly stood up and looked at a point in the ceiling in front of him.  
  
"At last..." it said. "The prophecy is fulfilled. It is found again, in the year that it was prophesised... The time has come!" The last word was a roar that shook more dust from the ceiling and echoed down the passageways leading from the room.  
  
The figure drew back the fold of its cloak and looked down at the hand that emerged into the light - a hand with talons, with red folds of skin and scale. The hand flexed into a fist, the tendons moving beneath the skin.  
  
"The time has come..." the figure repeated and then sank back into its former crouch in the pictogram.  
  
"Descendo..."  
  
bLondon, Great Britainb  
  
He'd always liked the night shift. He'd tried the day shift a few years back, but had found that he hated the crowds, the noise, the idiots who thought they knew about history, the other idiots who thought that certain sculptures were 'pretty.' He'd even heard some kid describe the Rosetta Stone as a 'dumb rock.'  
  
Harry Perkins shook his head and then started down the next passageway on his beat. No, at night the British Museum was quiet, placid, a haven of peace and knowledge. As long as he avoided some of the newer guards, who tended to be far too exuberant, he was happy being a security guard. Not that he'd ever really had to do very much. The British Museum, which held hundreds of thousands of artefacts either on display or in the warren of storerooms, had a state of the art security system... plus those people in Room 42.  
  
He'd once seen the bloke from that room on his beat one night. He was all right, for a Taff, he seemed to know a lot about the museum. He'd been looking at one of the Assyrian statues, with the body of a lion and the face of a bearded man. The Taff had had a pensive look and Harry had asked him if he was all right. Fine, he'd replied, just wondering what it must have been like when Nineveh fell all those millennia ago. A brutal people, the Assyrians, he'd added. Powerful, but brutal. Brought down by hubris, a powerful kingdom that had been a force for evil.  
  
They'd chatted for a little while, Perkins remembered, and the Taff had told him about the fall of Assyria after he'd asked about it. Then he noticed the time and had hurried off. No, Perkins thought, he had no idea what they did in Room 42. The two birds looked nice though.  
  
Speaking of time, he looked at his watch. 0230. Time for young Smith to call in. Or rather forget to for at least 5 minutes. He walked on, his footsteps echoing a little in the hallways. His wife Molly would have kept the bed warm for him when he got home in a few hours time. And today their son would be home, with the twins.  
  
Perkins smiled. He liked to spoil his grandkids. Shame that they supported Man U and not West Ham, but kids were kids. He looked at his watch again. 0238. A new record for Smith. He needed to have a word with that boy, he really did.  
  
At 0240 Perkins had had enough. He reached for his radio and unclipped it from his belt. "Night sweep time check," he snapped into it. Nothing. "Night sweep time check." Again nothing. "Smith, where the bloody hell are you?" Silence.  
  
Perkins swore softly and changed frequencies. "Control, this is Perkins."  
  
The reply came swiftly: "Go ahead Perkins."  
  
"Smith is late for his time check, but I can't raise him."  
  
There was a pause. "He's on the west sweep isn't he? When did you last talk to him?"  
  
"0200 hours. Or rather 0205, he was late. Nothing to report on his side."  
  
A sigh issued from the radio. "Okay, if you've finished your sweep head back his way. I'll send Cameron along. Silly little bastard's probably dropped his radio again, he did it two weeks ago."  
  
"Confirmed, Control," said Perkins and let out a sigh of his own as he started to walk back down the corridors. 0205... that would have put Smith in the area of Room 100. He heard footsteps up ahead and he lengthened his stride slightly. The footsteps stopped and he saw that it was Cameron, a tall, quiet Scotsman who read ferociously.  
  
"I'll murder the little sod," growled Cameron, "I was in the middle of the latest Falco novel on my break."  
  
They started off towards Room 100, which was empty, before starting out on the route for the west sweep, a patrol that covered a large part of the west wing of the British Museum.  
  
It wasn't until they got to Room 122 that they saw something out of place - an open door that lead to a storeroom. "Smith?" called Perkins, who was now starting to worry. "Are you in there?"  
  
"Hang on a sec," said Cameron. "I went past there on lockup time. That was locked, I checked it myself."  
  
"What's in there?"  
  
"Egyptian relics. Nothing's been on display there for ages, it's the place they put all the junk that doesn't fit the theories."  
  
As they approached the door Perkins' nose wrinkled. There was a smell coming from the room, a smell that reminded him of the butcher's shop where his wife worked...  
  
Cameron smelt it as well, because he went pale. "That smells like mah grandad's farm. On slaughtering day."  
  
Perkins approached the door slowly and pushed it open further. The light inside was off but the smell of... he wasn't sure what it was, but the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end now and his heart was pounding. Cameron unclipped his torch from his belt and turned it on, the powerful beam flashing into the room.  
  
Perkins frowned. "That's odd, the walls aren't supposed to be that colour..."  
  
Then he realised what was on the walls and he turned away and grabbed the waste bin that stood next to the door and voided his stomach into it, heaving until there was nothing left to bring up. When he turned back to the room Cameron was standing, pale and sweaty-faced, in the doorway, facing away from the room. With a trembling hand the Scot raised his radio and triggered it.  
  
"Control..." he said in a shaking voice, "This is Cameron. We've found Smith. Or what's left of him. Call the police." He looked down at Perkins and then grimaced.  
  
"And wake up the people from Room 42." 


	2. Beginnings

I still don't own the copyright on anything here, boy do I wish otherwise! This whole Charmed FanFic arrived in my skull the other day and I wanted to get it down fast while it was still fresh. This bit just wrote itself. Weird. Thanks to Witch Goddess and Chub for reviews!  
  
SAN FRANCISCO  
  
Paige was toasting waffles in the kitchen when she heard a groan and turned to look at the doorway. Piper was standing there, dressed in pajamas and slippers, a dressing gown loosely pulled on and her hair all over her face.  
  
"Please tell me that there's fresh coffee on?" she mumbled and spat some of her hair out of her mouth.  
  
"There's some fresh coffee on," Paige reassured her half-sister and poured some out into a mug. When she turned back to Piper she saw that she was slumped on a chair with her head on the table. The clunk of the mug being placed next to her was greeted with a deep sigh. Half the coffee disappeared in a few gulps, followed by more spitting noises as she removed strands of hair from her mouth again.  
  
"Jeez, you look terrible," said Paige and then regretted her comment at once as a single baleful eye opened and focused on her.  
  
"Yeah, well, some of us were up until 4am last night going through P3's books, while other people, who will remain nameless, were tucked up in bed," said Piper with a false sweetness in her voice.  
  
Paige sat down at the table and pushed over a plate of buttered waffles as a peace offering. "Why were you going through the books? I thought the club was doing great?" she asked.  
  
"It is," came the reply, "but the best way to make sure that it stays 'doing great' is to crunch the numbers and crack down on any financial wanderings. Like mysterious inconsistencies in the bar bills."  
  
Shocked, Paige blurted: "Someone's stealing from the club?"  
  
Piper bit the end of a waffle off savagely, glugged the rest of the coffee and then rested her head back on the table, waving the mug out vaguely. "Yup, keep the coffee coming, honey, my brain is still covered in red ink."  
  
Paige hurried to refill the mug and then sat next to her sister. "Who's the thief?"  
  
"We're not sure," was the weary reply. "Pheebs thinks its Guido being inventive with the bills. Gotta say I agree with her, but Leo thinks it's someone else."  
  
"It can't be Guido! Guido's cute!" said Paige, causing her sister to half sit up and pat her hand.  
  
"Honey, even the cutest people can be thieves. You're young, but you'll learn." She paused and her eyes narrowed. "Anyway, what are you doing up so early on a Saturday? Normally you're dead to the world until 10, and it's barely 9 now."  
  
Paige shrugged. "Couldn't sleep and it was beautiful morning, so I went for a walk." She looked back at her sister. "Come on," she said encouragingly, "I'll put some more coffee on and you can lie on the sofa and be as bad- tempered as you like. Especially if Phoebe's going to be anything as tired as you are."  
  
"She will be, she's not sleeping properly, what with Cole away in the underworld trying to find out what the Source is up to." She yawned hugely. "Why can't some nice scientist come up with a caffeine pill for general use? The sofa sounds nice though."  
  
Piper got up and walked through to the living room, zigzagging slightly as she tried to see through half-closed eyes until an alarmed Paige tried to steer her.  
  
After an irritable cry of: "I'm tired, Paige, not infirm!" she put her hands in the air and walked back to the kitchen, where she put more coffee on. There was a 'wumph' noise and she looked back into the other room. Piper was lying on her face on the sofa, her legs sticking out over its arms. "It's all right," she grunted through a cushion, "I meant to do that."  
  
"Meant to do what?" asked Phoebe as she walked in, also yawning hugely. "Piper, why are you lying on the sofa like that?"  
  
"I'm tired, Leo's being all cheerful again and there isn't enough caffeine in my system yet."  
  
Phoebe turned to Paige, who shrugged. "I guess you guys aren't morning people, are you?" Phoebe smiled wryly in response and walked through to the kitchen, where she fell upon the coffee with glad cries and much rejoicing and on the waffles with even more gusto.  
  
"Do you want some more coffee Piper?" she called and got a groan in response. Paige stuck her head around the doorway. "I guess that means 'yes.' Morning Leo! You, at least, look all bright and chirpy and energetic."  
  
"I don't need much sleep," replied the Whitelighter as he entered and looked down at his wife worriedly. "Piper, honey, are you asleep on the sofa again?"  
  
"Blurgh," was the response.  
  
"'Cause if you sleep like that you'll wake up with a crick in your neck," he said. Piper parted enough hair to reveal one of her eyes and regarded the man she's promised to love, honour and obey with an eye that was even more baleful than before. Then she held her hand out with the index and middle fingers in a v-shape and the rest of the hand clenched. After a few seconds of shaking this up and down she collapsed back onto the sofa. Leo sighed and sat down on the end of the sofa, where he lifted her head onto his lap and started to stroke her hair. Piper looked up at him. "I don't deserve a husband like you."  
  
"I'm getting used to the morning..." he paused, obviously looking for any other word but 'moodiness', "adventure."  
  
Phoebe shuffled back in with more coffee. "There you go honey." Piper opened her eyes again and made a gesture that was 50% thank you and 50% random waving of hands.  
  
"What was the deal with the victory salute?" hissed Paige.  
  
Phoebe blinked. "What victory salute?"  
  
Paige demonstrated what her sister had done and Phoebe scowled at Piper who was sipping more coffee. "That wasn't a nice thing to do to Leo!" She turned back to Paige. "Its... a British gesture. Not a very nice one, either, for a wife to give to her husband!"  
  
Piper looked embarrassed and then laid her head back onto Leo's lap.  
  
"Where'd you pick up a British insulting gesture? What does it mean, can I do it to people so they don't know what I'm telling them to go and whatever?" burbled Paige. Phoebe quelled her with a look.  
  
"No, I'm not telling you," she said as she walked over to the window and sat down. "We picked it up from a British cousin of ours who was over here a year ago and... oops." She cringed from Paige's own scowl.  
  
"Is this another relation I haven't been told about? Jeez, how many more people are in this family that I don't know about?" the younger woman hissed.  
  
"Well, we haven't seen him for a year. Not since he learnt that he had magic and went away to hone it. Paige, honey, we have a lot of stuff that you need to know about the family, and we apologize, we really do,-" Piper made a sleepy 'yup' noise "-but so much has been happening that we kind of forgot about it." She directed a sheepish smile at her sister, who came over and sat down next to her.  
  
"So what's he like?" she said.  
  
"Well, he's a bit older, not much, about 31, he lives in London, where he does something for the British Museum. Piper, what does Tom do again?"  
  
"Wstgl"  
  
"Honey, not helpful. Leo, is she asleep?" The Whitelighter nodded.  
  
"Well, he's a cousin on mom's father's side. He's Welsh, he's kinda bald, he likes wearing black, he's very kind and Prue found him very cute, and why are you looking over my shoulder like that?  
  
Paige looked out at the man with short balding hair, black clothing and a concerned look on his face who was walking outside up to the front door with two rather attractive women following. "Is that him?" she asked.  
  
HELL  
  
Cole ran through the dark tunnel, pausing now and then to look behind him. After a while he slowed, stopped, half crouched and drew a deep breath. There was a rough graze along his left arm where he had scraped himself on an unexpectedly jagged bit of wall.  
  
The tunnel walls here were smoother, but were also dank and slimy. Few demons knew about where they led and fewer bothered to explore. There was only one who did know all the passageways in the lowest levels and he was, from what Cole had just learnt, a long way away.  
  
On the surface. Being hunted. Cole shook his head. It made no sense. Why were they hunting HIM of all people. Most demons were terrified of... his mind skittered around his name... him.  
  
He tilted his head in thought. "They have every reason to be terrified of him. Hell, he terrifies me," and he shuddered at the memories that surfaced again. Then he straightened up and started to walk down the damp tunnel.  
  
"That bounty hunter saw me, I know it," he muttered. "But it looks like the bounty on him is more than the one on me. What's going on? Why does the Source want him dead so badly?"  
  
He could only think it was fear. And what could the Source fear so much that he put such a vast amount of money on the head of one of his own? 


	3. Stormclouds

I know nahtheeng... I owns nahtheeng... I don't own the copyright, yada, yada, yada. I'm just taking the characters out for a test drive again. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it... Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, you guys are great!  
  
SAN FRANCISCO  
  
Tom Evans grinned as he hugged his Halliwell cousins, the cousins that he hadn't seen in more than a year, not since he'd suddenly and dramatically discovered not only that magic was real, but that he also had control of a pretty powerful bit of it.  
  
That memory made the grin fade and he disengaged himself from Piper and Phoebe. "I'm sorry," he said, his head going down, "that I missed Prue's funeral. I was in Russia on business, and by the time they got word to me..." He shrugged and grimaced.  
  
"They told us that they couldn't get to you," said Piper, her eyes bright with sudden tears. "And we got your letters after it. Don't worry about it. We know how much you cared about her." Phoebe made a little lost noise and he hugged them both again.  
  
Then he stepped back and gestured to the two women behind him. "This is Molly Durrell..." the dark haired women in the denims nodded and smiled, "And Theresa Atkins." This came with a longer, more loving, look at the other women, who had red hair and a puckish air about her. She smiled back at him and then stepped up and reached over to hold his hand as she looked at the Halliwells. "So these are the Charmed Ones," she muttered.  
  
"We all work for the British Museum, and yes they're both witches as well," said Tom. He looked beyond Piper and Phoebe. "And you must be Paige. Your sisters have both told me so much about you."  
  
Paige walked forwards, her eyes moving upwards with embarrassment. "Yeah, well, I only found out about you today. So I know nothing about you really." She grimaced as well. "Oops. Too much honesty first time out?"  
  
"Just a tad," said Tom and then grinned at her. "You remind me of your Gran. I'm sorry you never knew her."  
  
"I met her. Thanks to these two and a bit of hocus-pocus. And I met my mom," said Paige and then she found herself swept into a hug by a cousin she'd never known until that morning.  
  
When they disengaged, Phoebe wiped her tears from her eyes, humphed a little to pretend that nothing had happened and then asked: "How come you never told us you were on holiday here? And when did you arrive?"  
  
Tom looked at his two companions sombrely and then back at his cousins. "Pheebs, we're here on business, not a holiday. And we need your help. It's serious."  
  
Piper rolled her eyes. "Like that's a change for us? Can it wait until we get dressed?" "Yes, as long as you have coffee. Lots of it. We were in London an hour ago, and bloody hell, speaking for us all, I'm knackered. An hour before that we were in Egypt, so three time zones in two hours and ouch!" yawned Tom.  
  
Leo gaped. "That's a long way to go by magic," he said, to be greeted with a sheepish smile from Tom.  
  
"I've polished my gifts," he answered. "I've learnt a lot. Coffee? Please? Even just coffee beans to chew?"  
  
"Milk, no sugar?" said Piper. He nodded. "You know where the kitchen is, and I need to change." She swept up the stairs, followed by Phoebe. The three British newcomers all yawned and followed Paige and Leo into the kitchen.  
  
"So what do you do for the Museum?" asked the youngest Halliwell as she started the third pot of coffee of the morning.  
  
The others had all parked themselves around the table and now the two girls looked at Tom. He parted his hands in an expressive gesture and then said, less expressively, "Artefacts and stuff."  
  
"Okay, that's a little unclear," accused Paige.  
  
Tom humphed and then grabbed eagerly as his cousin placed three large cups of coffee on the table in front of them. After a long draught from his mug he leant forwards.  
  
"Okay," he said a little less wearily. "How long have you been practising magic now? Six months?" She nodded. "How many magical pendants, enchanted objects, hexed items have you seen in that time?"  
  
Paige opened her mouth to answer, paused, closed her mouth and then scowled with thought. "A lot," she finally said.  
  
"Well, there's a lot more out there. Most are less magical, some are very powerful and a few are lethal if they ever fall into the wrong hands. And they're just the modern ones. Places like the British Museum see hundreds, maybe thousands of new finds come in every year from archaeological digs or smaller museums. Stuff that people have long forgotten about. We three - and there are a few part-time witches as well - help to sift through what comes in, looking for the out-of-the-way objects that could be magical."  
  
"And yes," added Theresa, who was sitting so close to Tom that Paige could tell at a glance that they were an item, "The museum authorities - a few people in security as well - know about magic. Not everything, just that certain objects are dangerous and that they need someone on site to deal with any problems."  
  
"So they should," said Molly darkly, "After that incident with that Saxon helmet and the Duke of Kent. And the Clay Woman from Babylon."  
  
Paige's eyebrows shot up. "What Clay Woman from Babylon?"  
  
Tom looked chagrined, while Molly and Theresa giggled. He glared at them but they glared back.  
  
"Small figurine about..." he held his hands about four inches apart, "That big. Some idiot put it on display without clearing it with anyone from our department. Came from a dig in Babylon, dated to about 1000 BC. First morning it was before the public, the security guards started to notice that they kept seeing more and more women coming back to stand in front of it." He stopped to glare at Molly and Theresa again, who were both now crying with laughter.  
  
"Were they worshipping it?" asked Leo, puzzled.  
  
"No, they'd just discovered that women who stood before it for a while had... well... lots of orgasms. We almost had a riot on our hands when we closed the room. Fortunately it also had some kind of affect on their memory."  
  
"Wow," said Paige, her lips twitching madly. "What happened to it?"  
  
"It's locked in a safe, inside a bigger safe, in a strong room in the lowest level of the Bank of England." He grinned for the first time since he'd started the story. Then he sobered. "I wish it was that simple with this..." He looked down at his bag, where for the first time Paige could see the outline of some folders. "We'll wait for Piper and Pheebs."  
  
What Piper called a war council reconvened in the living room shortly afterwards, although by the way that she was gripping a huge mug of coffee it was even odds that she might fall asleep again.  
  
Tom took out a large folder from a bag and removed a large glossy picture that he held against his chest as he spoke.  
  
"Um..." he started, "Four days ago the British Museum discovered a break in. Or rather, security discovered that someone or something had broken into the middle of the building. Leaving no sign of any forced entry on the outside." His eyebrows rose. "As if something had mysteriously appeared inside the building." He looked around at everyone. "Sound familiar?"  
  
"Demon," was Phoebe's grim response.  
  
"Got it in one," said Tom. "Whatever it was, it broke into a storeroom. Where it was discovered by a security guard called Harry Smith, who... did not survive the event. There's a picture of the crime scene here, but it's a bit... unpleasant."  
  
Wordlessly Phoebe reached up for the photo. When she saw what was on it she went pale and a hand flew to her mouth. Then she closed her eyes and handed it back before shaking her head firmly at Piper and Paige.  
  
"He was torn apart," she said faintly.  
  
"From the claw marks initially the police thought that some kind of wild beast had got loose. Then their own magic branch - it's got a different name of course - called it in as a demon attack." Tom sighed. "Only one thing was stolen... this," he said as he took a set of pictures out of a different folder and laid them on the table.  
  
The Charmed Ones and Leo leant over and stared at them. Viewed from different angles the set showed a strange artefact made out of some kind of white material. It looked like an elongated capital E, with the prongs perpendicular with the main stem. The three prongs each had a hole bored at the end.  
  
"It looks like something once fitted through these holes," murmured Leo, frowning.  
  
"Two things, actually. If you look carefully, the right hand one and half the middle one are square holes, the left hand one and the other half of the middle one are round," said Theresa, pointing carefully. "So this is only part of an artefact."  
  
"What makes you think it's magical?" asked Piper.  
  
"Why else would it be stolen by a demon? And when it first came in, almost a hundred years ago, the people who were in our department then thought that they could detect something faint. Like it was a part of something, but that it had no power without the rest of the pieces."  
  
"Where was it found?" asked Paige.  
  
Molly answered that one. "Giza, 1900. The archaeologists couldn't identify it, they couldn't tell what it was made of, and they couldn't even date it. Fortunately it was in the shattered remains of a pot, and that they could date. Last Dynasty of the Egyptian Old Kingdom, just before the First Intermediate Period."  
  
Phoebe looked up. "Honey, you're going to have to be a leettle more general for us ignorant Colonials."  
  
Molly blushed. "Sorry. Problem with working at the British Museum is you start to assume that everyone around you knows the same things. We're talking about 2200 BC."  
  
There was a stunned silence. Then Paige blurted: "You mean this thing is more than 4000 years old?"  
  
"Yes," said Tom softly. "We know where one of the other parts was - it was found a week ago on a dig near Elephantine, in a pot that dated to the end of the Old Kingdom. Same time, identical pot as the main piece," he added, pushing another photograph over the table. The four craned their heads to see an image of a square rod approximately 12 inches long, made of the same white material as the larger piece. One end finished in a small globe.  
  
"That's the only picture we have, but by the measurements..."  
  
"It looks like that part slots into the other one," agreed Leo. "Where is it now?"  
  
The British trio looked, as if it was possible, even grimmer.  
  
Theresa answered: "Two days ago it was stolen from a tent on the dig site. And the archaeologist who found it was-"  
  
Piper broke in. "Let me guess - torn limb from limb?" She sighed as the others nodded. "Now there's a surprise. Why can't we have enemies who make cutting remarks or who throw puppies at people?"  
  
Her youngest sister looked at her. "Piper, calm down and drink your coffee. And work on your metaphors." She looked back at Tom. "Awfully big coincidence, having two thefts in one week. Were there any witnesses in Egypt?"  
  
He replied by opening another folder. "Not to the murder. But we talked to one of the foremen on the dig, a Coptic Christian called Joseph Al-Majouri. He told us he saw the Devil in the camp that night."  
  
Leo blinked. "The devil? You mean the Source?"  
  
Tom pulled a piece of paper out of the folder and placed it on the table. "Not quite," he replied. "He saw this, he said. And we have no idea what the hell it is. Or rather what in hell it is."  
  
The picture had been drawn in chalks by a very good artist, with the occasional hint of pencil marks underneath. It showed the left side of a sweeping black hood that hid most of the face beneath. But what it did show was part of cheek and a massive jaw, with some kind of spikes of bone protruding from the chin. Two large fangs jutted up from the lower jaw and the skin looked dark red and rough - possibly scaly. Almost hidden in the darkness under the hood was a red gleam, roughly where the eye would have been - on a human that is.  
  
The Charmed Ones shared a collective shiver. Whatever it was, the picture alone looked malevolent enough.  
  
Phoebe picked the picture up and looked more closely at it. "Well, we can check the Book of Shadows, but I've never seen anything like this in it. Did it say anything? Do anything else?"  
  
"No," replied Theresa. "Apparently it just glared at him and then walked behind a tent. Just as well, the poor man was frozen with terror. He couldn't move for almost twenty minutes. Then he heard screams from the tent, where another guard had discovered the body. No-one else saw anything or heard anything."  
  
"What about the body?" said Leo as he poured more coffee into a pale Piper's mug.  
  
"Same as poor old Smith. He wouldn't have had enough time to even scream. Same claw marks, same MO."  
  
Paige was about to open her mouth to ask a question when there was a flicker out of the corner of her eye and she looked around in time to see Cole materialize in mid-air. He seemed to have been leaping when he shimmered out of wherever he had been, because the momentum carried him a good six feet over to small table, which did not survive the encounter.  
  
"Ow," he said, getting up shakily and brushing bits of wood off his legs. Then he looked up and froze. "Oops."  
  
Phoebe had started from her chair the moment that she had seen Cole and now she hugged him. "It's okay," she reassured him, "It's just Tom and two witch friends and more trouble. Although you could have picked a slightly less spectacular entrance."  
  
"Bounty hunter," he explained enigmatically. "Out of touch bounty hunter, actually. We need to talk. Something's happening down there, it's total chaos. The Source has placed the biggest bounty ever, something that makes the one on me look like peanuts, on..." He froze and tilted his head as he focussed on the table. "On him," he said wonderingly as he pointed at the chalk drawing of the demon. 


	4. Sacrifice

Once again, this just poured out of me. I got home from work, sat down, had a sandwich and lost several hours. Anyway, disclaimers: I know nahtheeng... I owns nahtheeng... I don't own the copyright, yada, yada, yada. I'm just taking the characters out for a test drive again. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it... Thanks to everyone who has reviewed, you guys are my muses!  
  
HALLIWELL MANSION  
  
Cole looked down at the pictures and listened as Tom went over what he had told the others. At the end he looked up. "I don't know that the artifact is," he said, "Especially as it's way before my time. But this," he gestured at the picture, "I do know. Everyone down below knows him and everyone hopes they never meet him. His name is Tethos."  
  
Leo gaped. "You've got to be wrong, I've met him, he looks nothing like that. thing!"  
  
Cole turned to look at the Whitelighter. "When did you last see him?"  
  
"New York, 1962," was the response. Cole shook his head. "Then you met the old Tethos. Before he changed into that."  
  
"But-" Cole raised a hand. "He changed, Leo. I don't know what happened, but he changed."  
  
Slowly Leo slumped back in his chair. Something inside him seemed to deflate. "Then he finally lost himself," he muttered.  
  
Piper had watched this interplay with an increasing scowl and now she finally broke in. "Do you guys come with subtitles, or could explain what you're talking about? Who is this Titos, or whatever he's called?"  
  
"Tethos," Cole corrected absently. He looked over at Leo. "You'd better start. I'll finish with his career in hell."  
  
Leo nodded slowly and then looked back over at the photo. "His real name - his human name - was Constantine. He was a king of a small Welsh realm in South Wales just before the Norman Invasion of England in 1066. And he was a force for good. Powerful with magic, popular with his people, and instant death on demons. The Church called him 'The Thorn,' as he was always a thorn in the side of the then Source."  
  
"Who hated him," broke in Cole.  
  
"Anyway, he was married to Rhiannon, the daughter of a nobleman, they had a baby son, Constantine's right hand man was his brother Idris, and everything was perfect for him. Until the Source decided that he had interfered with enough of his plans and decided to get rid of him, either by turning or killing him." Leo smiled tightly. "Typical Source.  
  
"He had an ace in the hole though, in the form of Rhiannon. You see, what her father had failed to tell anyone was that his wife had been a demon - so that Rhiannon was half-demon herself."  
  
Paige raised her hand. "How come someone missed that bit out? How can you miss the fact that your wife had a demon mother?"  
  
"Apparently her demon side never manifested itself when she was young. And Rhiannon was good herself, she was a powerful witch who hated demons as much as Constantine." "But the Source did something to her," guessed Tom.  
  
Both Cole and Leo nodded. "He woke her dark side up. He woke the demon inside her," said Cole softly and then winced as Phoebe applied a bandage to the scrape on his arm. Sorry, she mouthed.  
  
Leo leant forwards and he carried on: "He did it slowly, over several months, so as not to warn her. It had finally got to the point where the demon side was awake when Rhiannon was asleep. Even then, it was very weak and. well, what Rhiannon loved, her dark side loved. The Source couldn't do much without forcing her to act, and whatever she was doing to Constantine it seemed that it wasn't having much of an effect.  
  
"Of course the Source got impatient and tried to move too fast. Rhiannon started to notice that something was wrong - she'd go to sleep and then wake up somewhere else, she had terrible nightmares, she felt different, wrong. And Constantine noticed. And drew the wrong conclusions. He thought that she had fallen out of love with him. He was devastated."  
  
Cole raised his hand and Leo nodded. "Whatever his wife did to him when under the control of her demon side, the magic she used did have one effect on him. It woke up his paranoia. The Source was trying to turn him to evil, but it was so slow, as Leo said. But the paranoia and the fear that Rhiannon didn't love him seem to have fed off each other. That's a bad combination." Cole shook his head.  
  
"Especially," said Leo, "When he somehow thought that she was now in love with his brother. One night Rhiannon woke up in their son's nursery and realised she was holding a dagger. She was terrified, she knew that something evil was going on and she ran to Idris's rooms to beg him to help her. She was too afraid of what her husband might do, that he might send her away. I don't know what she was thinking. And then, when she was on her knees crying in front of Idris, who didn't have the faintest idea what was going on, in walked Constantine and everything blew up.  
  
"Constantine thought that his fears were real, he snatched the dagger and... killed his only brother. He was about to kill her as well when the Source made another spectacularly badly timed effort to take over her dark side. Constantine saw something, saw that an evil force was trying to possess her - and then he saw her demon side for the first time."  
  
The room was silent. "What happened?" asked Phoebe in a small voice.  
  
"He realised that there was evil in his wife - and that the Source was involved. So he used a spell to call her demon side to the surface and forced it to tell the truth. Everything, the fact that the Source was trying to influence her, the fact that she didn't know about her demon half, the fact that she loved him deeply... the fact that Idris was innocent. He fell on his knees and broke down in tears, howling for forgiveness.  
  
"The moment she was released from the spell Rhiannon knew everything as well. It must have been shattering. She picked up the dagger and was about to kill herself when Constantine stopped her. He... did something that no one has ever done before or since. He performed a forbidden spell."  
  
Leo drew a deep breath. "He willingly extracted her demon side from the women he loved and absorbed it within himself. He saved her soul by damning his own."  
  
"What?" squeaked Paige.  
  
"The spell's forbidden because it's also incredibly dangerous. If he'd got it wrong, even the smallest part of a word mispronounced, he'd have killed them both. And," said Cole, turning to Phoebe and taking her hands in his, "Don't even think about researching it. No matter how much you want to save me, I'd never agree to transfer any part of my demon side to you. Ever. It's my burden, my penance. My problem."  
  
Phoebe smiled sadly. "What did he do then?" she asked.  
  
"He kissed his wife, kissed their son, announced that he had murdered his brother and then exiled himself. He walked from the castle and never set foot in his kingdom again. Ever." Leo said as he drained the rest of his coffee and then gestured at Cole. "You'd better tell the rest of it."  
  
Cole flexed his arm where Phoebe had put the bandage on it and started to pull his shirt back on. "Well," he said slowly, "Constantine vanished from the world of men. Five years later a demon calling himself Tethos appeared at the Gates of Hell."  
  
"Hell has gates?" quizzed Piper.  
  
"Big ones, very ornate," said Cole grinning. "Not at all practical though, like much of down below. Well, Tethos made quite an impact because he kicked the gates down and then announced that he was here to teach the Source a lesson. The Source sent the usual demon enforcer to teach him a lesson. Tethos killed him. He killed everyone between him and the Source, nothing could stop him. When he reached the Source, he announced that he had once been Constantine, and that he was here to avenge himself. A fairly impressive battle followed, which ended with Tethos nailing the Source to the ceiling of his own throne room with red-hot iron bolts."  
  
"He killed the Source?" broke in Paige. "Way to go! For a demon, that is."  
  
"No," said Cole with an odd smile, "I didn't say that he killed the Source, just that he nailed him to the ceiling."  
  
"That didn't kill him? It would kill me," said Phoebe.  
  
Cole shook his head. "No-one knows just what Tethos did to him. He was left alive but stripped of his powers. He's still alive now."  
  
"Waaittt a minute," Piper protested, "I'm seen pictures of the Source's throne room and there's no dangly evil guy on the ceiling."  
  
Cole shook his head. "That's the new throne room. The old one's in the chambers behind it. The old Source - Malchance his name was, so we'd better call him that to stop any confusion - went mad in 1203, for understandable reasons, and his successor finally had to move rooms because of the insane gibberings."  
  
Piper failed to hide a grin. "So what happened to Tethos?"  
  
"Well, he vanished into the tunnels underneath. It's a labyrinth down there; almost no one knows where they all lead. He disappeared into them. Occasionally someone would see him. As long as they didn't interfere with him, he left them alone."  
  
Her eyes narrowed, Piper leant forwards. "What happened to those that did interfere with him?"  
  
"He killed them. He has a massive amount of power. Remember, he was witch for years, he fought demons, and then he acquired demon powers on top of that. But the problem with the various Sources down the centuries is that they see everything in terms of forces and counter forces, everything boiled down to pieces on a chessboard. Every Source has seen Tethos as a valuable possible assassin. Every Source has sent demons down to meet him, first to recruit him, then to force him to join and finally just to try and get rid of him. Every Source has failed. It's every demon's nightmare to meet Tethos. Including mine," Cole admitted. "The present Source sent a Citalis demon against him in 1946."  
  
"Wow," breathed Leo. He looked at the looks of incomprehension on the faces of the others. "It's a walking tank, almost impossible to kill. Incredibly bad tempered as well. What happened?"  
  
Cole winced. "The Source walked into his throne room the day after and discovered its head on his throne, with a note that said that it was lucky he'd been away when Tethos had called, otherwise he'd have been walking with bow legs from the delivery of the head."  
  
Paige frowned and then winced herself. "But now the Source has put enough of a reward on his head to make people want to try?" she asked.  
  
"A huge amount of money," nodded Cole. "Enough to tempt anyone."  
  
Tom cleared his throat. "And now you say that he's changed?"  
  
"I always thought that he would never give himself to his evil side," said Leo. "Apart from Idris, he's never killed any humans, only demons."  
  
Cole frowned and stood up, looking down at the floor. "Ah... when I was still popular down below," he said, looking uncomfortable, "I was once with the Source when he received a report from one of his spies. It was about 30 years ago, the Source had realised how futile it was to try and kill Tethos by then, and so he set spies on him instead. They started reporting that Tethos had secluded himself in one set of rooms down in the most inaccessible part of the tunnels and had started on a spell. A very long, very powerful, very complex one."  
  
"What kind of spell?" questioned Molly.  
  
"I don't know. No one knows. Tethos left some pretty nasty traps in some of the passageways leading to his chambers. A lot of the Source's spies never came back. I saw what had happened to one of them afterwards - just a head and a hand protruding from a wall. The next time I saw Tethos himself he looked..." Cole gestured at the picture. "Well, like that. I only knew it was him when he spoke. Told me to get out of his way or he'd kill me."  
  
"Sooo..." said Piper, picking up the picture, "We have an all-powerful demon on the loose, apparently with his real dark side on display for the first time in a thousand years, going after an artifact with unknown powers, with the last piece somewhere totally unknown. And that combination has scared the Source enough to post a massive bounty on this demon. Does anyone else not like this picture?"  
  
"I'll ask the Elders about the artifact," offered Leo, picking up one of the photographs of the larger piece and then transforming into a thousand points of blue-white light and vanishing upwards.  
  
Tom looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. "I wish he hadn't done that," he said.  
  
Piper turned to him in surprise. "Why?"  
  
"Because I was about to say that we have a lead on the third piece and that having a Whitelighter about the place could have been quite helpful."  
  
Piper winced. "Leo!" 


	5. The Path

I don't own anything here, not the copyright and something possibly not my own mind. Yada yada yada, I'm taking the characters out for another wee spin around my demented imagination. Thanks to Gryffindor620 for the reviews!  
  
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Piper was about to open her mouth again to call for Leo, when Tom looked back at her and made a shushing gesture. "It's alright, it's far more important to find out what this thing is. As for the third piece," he pulled out the last folder from his bag, "We think it might be here in San Francisco."  
  
"Maybe." Theresa qualified. "It's the best lead we have."  
  
Tom flipped through the folder in his hand, drained the last of his own coffee and then looked at Phoebe. "Have you ever heard of a local millionaire called Richard Cunningham?"  
  
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Oh boy have I heard of him! The paper's lawyers are scared stiff of him, every time he gets mentioned in the paper he objects to something in the story and tries to sue us. All you have to do is mention his name and a little vein starts throbbing in the editor's forehead."  
  
"Is this the guy who's getting his fifth divorce?" asked Piper.  
  
"Yup. The guy is unpleasant but very, very rich and very, very reclusive."  
  
Tom gave them a hard smile. "He also seems to be very, very dishonest. The British Museum has a stack of accusations about him, detailing how he's bought up black market artifacts, items that are very rare and which somehow vanish from digs.  
  
"Back in 1972, when he still had a good reputation, he financed an archaeological excavation near Karnak in Egypt. Lots of money, lots of resources and some big names to do the digging. However, after two months the Egyptian Government moved in and shut the whole thing down, lock stock and barrel. It turned out that there were some pretty massive discrepancies between what was being discovered and what was being declared as finds. The Egyptians have a lot of experience of this sort of thing and they cracked down hard.  
  
"Cunningham was in the country at the time but flew out that night, despite a warrant for his arrest. The Egyptians recovered some of the missing finds, but not all of them. And not." Tom pulled out an old colour photograph and laid it on the table. "This." It an image of a now-familiar white object. Like the other smaller piece it was about 12 inches long, but this time it was round.  
  
Cole looked up. "I think we have a match," he murmured. "But are you sure Cunningham still has it?"  
  
Molly nodded. "We're pretty sure. We did a search of the archives and nothing like that has been sold on the open - or black - market since it was discovered."  
  
"Besides," added Tom, "Cunningham isn't the kind of person to sell things on. He's never sold anything to do with archaeology. Maybe he's afraid that it'll leave a paper trail back to him, or that it might attract too much attention."  
  
Phoebe nodded. "Let me guess, you're going to pay him a visit? I was wondering why all three of you came."  
  
Theresa grinned. "We do the 'We're from the British Museum and you're in trouble' routine very well now. Not that we have any jurisdiction over here, but at least we can see if it's there."  
  
"And also warn him that there's something, or rather someone, who murdering people to get hold of the entire artifact," said Tom, rummaging in his bag again. He straightened up and threw a small leather wallet to Piper, who caught it with a frown on her face.  
  
"What's this?" She opened it, stared at her picture, and read out loud: "Piper Halliwell, Assistant Director, Room 42, The British Museum." She turned back to her cousin. "Wow! I'm a deputy! Do I get paid?"  
  
"You got some for us too?" asked Paige eagerly.  
  
Tom shook his head. "Sorry, I had pictures of Piper and Pheebles here, but not one of you. Phoebe writes for the paper, so she's too well known. And if we do see, by an amazing bit of luck, the third piece just lying around, Piper can freeze everyone and we can grab it. Not that life is ever that simple."  
  
"Nah," growled Piper, waving her new warrant card under the nose of a scowling Paige who stuck her tongue out, "Our luck normally stinks. Lets go before Leo gets back and asks why my maiden name is on this thing."  
  
"Well, what can I do?" wailed Paige.  
  
Tom stood up and started to put the photos back into the right folders. "Check the Book of Shadows," he suggested, "for anything about Tethos. Even a mention in a description of another demon. We need all the information we can get. If he is as deadly as Cole and Leo say, we need all the help we can get."  
  
"Cole and I will help, honey," soothed Phoebe. She looked thoughtful. "Something's nagging at me about something someone said, but I can't my finger on it." Cole looked at her sharply.  
  
"I don't like it when things nag at you," he said wryly, "Bad things tend to happen afterwards."  
  
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Getting to see Richard Cunningham was easier said than done. For one thing, he lived in a large house that overlooked Candlestick Point. The gardens were quite extensive, enclosed by a large wall with electrified wire running along the top, just above stretched razor wire. There seemed to be only one gate. There was nothing even remotely ornate about this, it was massive, hung on hinges that were firmly cemented into the wall and made of some kind of reinforced metal. A security camera hung on each side of the gate, red lights blinking on top.  
  
"Whoa," said Piper, "This guy is either seriously paranoid or he's made some very bad enemies."  
  
"Both, from what I've heard," muttered Tom and then pressed the button on the intercom. After a while the security camera nearest them turned slightly to focus more closely on them and a tinny voice said: "Identify yourself."  
  
Tom pressed the button again. "Tom Evans, Theresa Atkins, Molly Durrell and Piper Halliwell, from Room 42 of the British Museum. We would like to see Mr Cunningham on a matter of some urgency."  
  
There was a pause. Then the intercom clicked back on. "Mr Cunningham is busy. However, Mr Andrews, his head of security, can see you. Please follow the path to the house, where you will be met. Do not leave the path for your own protection."  
  
A series of heavy clacks followed and the gates slowly opened outwards, allowing the four in.  
  
The path was more of a road, with lampposts on either side of it, and went straight to the front of the house.  
  
"Interesting," said Tom as they walked down it.  
  
"What?" asked Piper, who was feeling increasingly nervous.  
  
"The nearest trees are that clump over there. Nothing near the walls, or this path. A clear field of fire, or rather it makes it easy to see who's in the path. And judging by the size of the dogs I can see over there, dragging that security guard, it's designed to allow then free rein. By the way, don't look but there's a camera on every other lamppost. I think the idea is to intimidate."  
  
"Yeah? Well, it's working," muttered Piper. "And when did you become all Mr Observation?"  
  
He shrugged. "Part of the job I suppose. You need to use your eyes." The front door of the house opened as they approached and a large African- American man emerged, dressed in a beautifully tailored double-breasted suit that failed to hide his muscles.  
  
"Mr Evans?" he said, holding his hand out for Tom to shake. "I'm Karl Andrews, head of security." He shook hands with the others as Tom made the introductions. "Let me show you all to my office."  
  
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Cortalyn hurried down the passageway, swearing under his breath. It had been a bad idea, but no, the Source hadn't listened. He never listened to anyone except the Oracle these days, and he was getting dangerously short- tempered even with her. Bounty hunters! Useless rabble! He preferred a well- trained, quiet assassin any day of the week. Assassins were more reliable and less likely to get drunk in demon bars, shoot their mouths off about who they'd killed during their short, brutish, careers and then get into a fight about who someone else there was looking at.  
  
He slowed as he approached the Source's throne room and smoothed his cassock in a nervous gesture. Far off to one side, down one of the passageways he heard a faint echo as a voice burst into song before trailing off into anguished sobs and his head snapped around. It was true then, Malchance was awake for the first time in almost a decade. Whatever Tethos was planning, it had to be big to get the old Source so agitated. Sighing, Cortalyn walked forwards into the throne room and went down on one knee.  
  
"Speak," came a voice, and he looked up to see that the Source was standing in front of a large golden frame suspended in mid-air, in which a vertical blue pool shimmered and rippled.  
  
"Aach is dead, master," said Cortalyn. "He came across Tethos, who killed him instantly."  
  
The Source made an angry sound and the blue pool shuddered for a second and turned a reddish colour before it went blue again. "Where did Gorgos find him?"  
  
"San Francisco, master. But we do not know where exactly."  
  
"Has Gorgos reported back?"  
  
"No, master. Given his two previous failures, he is most likely in hiding," Cortalyn said, greatly daring.  
  
The Source turned and stared at the demon, who stared back for a second and then dropped his gaze to the floor.  
  
"Be thankful," his master said as he turned back to the pool, "That I do not send you next. Raise the bounty again."  
  
Cortalyn gaped. "But master!"  
  
The Source chuckled. "The more the bounty hunters chase him, the more markers he will leave as he kills them. And when I know where he is, and that it is close to him, I will make my move. With it in my hands, nothing can stop me. Not Tethos, or even the Charmed Ones."  
  
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"How can Mr Cunningham help the British Museum?" asked Andrews as he faced the four across a desk that was bare apart from a broken bayonet that seemed to be doubling up as a letter opener and a small but powerful laptop. On the wall behind his chair was just one picture, that of Andrews in marine uniform with a group of fellow marines clustered around an Iraqi flag.  
  
Tom looked at Andrews for a moment. The man, he realised, had a poker face that looked as if it was carved out of granite. Okay, he thought, this bloke is all business. Well, we'd better be all business back at him. He opened the first folder and slid the picture inside over the desk.  
  
"Four days ago a security guard at the British Museum interrupted a burglary and was torn to pieces by a person or persons unknown," he stated.  
  
Andrews looked down at the picture of the shredded body.  
  
"Nasty," was his only comment as he slid the picture back across the desk.  
  
"Two days ago, a Professor Ibrahim Hussein was killed at an archaeological dig in Egypt," Tom went on, laying a second picture on the desk in front of him.  
  
"Equally nasty," said Andrews after he had looked at that picture as well. "I take it there's a connection?"  
  
"Yes," replied Tom and then took out the pictures of the first two parts of the artifact and giving them to the head of security. "The large was one was stolen in London, the smaller one in Egypt."  
  
Andrews said nothing, but from the faintest of flickers of his eyebrows Tom knew that he had him. "Is this still in the possession of Mr Cunningham?" and he flicked a copy of the picture of the third piece over the desk.  
  
Andrews looked at the picture and then slid it back across the desk. "Mr Cunningham owns many valuable artifacts. What makes you think he has ever owned that?"  
  
"I know that it was discovered on a dig that he financed in 1972 and that it vanished at the same time that he left Egypt."  
  
"Mr Evans, if you are trying to insinuate-"  
  
Tom broke in. "I'm not accusing him, I know that he has it. We're not here to demand it, we don't have the authority, if anyone does it's the Egyptian Government, but we are here to tell you that someone has killed twice to get their hands on the other parts of the artifact. Someone who, as you saw in those photos, is not afraid not just to kill but also to dismember. Whoever has that object is in a great deal of danger."  
  
Andrews stared at Tom, while Piper did her best not to gape at her cousin. Since when had he learnt to sound so authoritarian? Molly and Theresa didn't make a sound. This, Piper could tell, was what Tom did best, the stern deliverer of nasty warnings.  
  
Suddenly Andrews stood up. "I'll pass on your warning to Mr Cunningham. He has a wide range of... contacts. If any of them owns this object, I'm sure that they will take appropriate measures. Your mobile phone number is on your card, so someone might be in touch with you. In the meantime, I'll show you out."  
  
Piper blinked but followed the others as Andrews ushered them politely but firmly out to the front door and then off up the path.  
  
"What..." she started, but paused as Tom shushed her. They strode quickly away from the house.  
  
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Andrews watched the four as they walked away from the building. He was frowning hard. Two other people had been listening to the meeting, one of whom was his secretary who had quickly done some checking into the two murders that Evans had mentioned. Andrews now had her research in his hand. He turned as a side door opened and a wizened but wiry man in his 70's and dressed in denims came through.  
  
"Interesting," said the old man, looking up the path at the four. "Were they bullshittin'?"  
  
"It seems not sir," said the ex-marine, holding out the printouts. "The deaths they mentioned did occur when they said. The thefts seem to be the motive. But I think that Evans was hiding something. And the Halliwell girl certainly thought that he should have said more. I think there is a possible risk here, Mr Cunningham. We should increase security, at least for the short term."  
  
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"Okay," protested Piper, "What was that? Why did we just leave so quickly? The third piece is in there, you heard him skate around the subject!"  
  
Tom smiled. "Didn't you see the microphone blinking on his laptop? It wasn't just him listening in there, I think Cunningham heard everything as well. No, we know it's in there, we'll just have to come back late tonight."  
  
"What about the dogs and the security flickety things?"  
  
Tom and Theresa shared a grin.  
  
"Leave that to us." 


	6. Deductions

Apologies for the lateness of this thing folks, I've had an oddly lazy weekend where very little I set out to do actually happened. Normal service should be resumed as of tonight. Apologies also for the shortness of this piece. Oh hell's toenails, disclaimers... I don't own the characters, copyright ain't mine either. Life sucks. Please R&R!  
  
Phoebe closed the Book of Shadows with a sigh. "Nothing."  
  
Glancing up from where he'd been staring out of the window, Cole shrugged. "I didn't think that there would be. He never associated with any demons that I knew about. And he never killed anyone - anyone human that is - that I heard about."  
  
"But he killed plenty of demons?" asked Paige from the depths of the large armchair she had snuggled into once it had become clear that Tethos was very much an unknown quantity for the book.  
  
"Oh, yes," Cole moved over to stand by Phoebe. "Plenty of demons." He looked at her and tucked a tendril of her hair back over her ear. "Have you located your nagging doubt that we've missed something?"  
  
She bit her lip in thought. "No, and it's starting to drive me nuts. It's something that's been fluttering at the back of my mind since." she spun around to face him. "You told us about Tethos!"  
  
He raised an eyebrow. "Something I said?"  
  
Phoebe wrinkled her brow with thought and paced around the stand on which the Book of Shadows lay. "Um..." She stopped dead in her tracks. "You said that Tethos started this rite of his about 30 years ago." Cole nodded.  
  
She raised a finger. "When was the third part discovered again?"  
  
"1972," said Paige and then her eyes widened. "Cole, when exactly did the Source hear about Tethos going into his magic mojo thingy?"  
  
Cole cursed. "1972. That's too exact to be a coincidence... He knew that it had been found. He must have. But how?"  
  
Now it was Cole's turn to do the pacing, holding his palms together and placing the tips of his forefingers against his nose. "Finding magical artifacts is tricky - it's easier to scry for people. And this thing, whatever it is, is dismantled, so it's not giving off any magical energy. You could scry for the pieces for years until your chains wear out and your crystals turn to dust and you still wouldn't find a thing. So how... It might be a very powerful location spell, but that wouldn't give a precise idea where something was. You could hide something in San Francisco and the closest someone might get would be 'central California.' No, he must have something else." He looked up. "We need Leo. We need to find out what this thing is."  
  
Far below they heard the front door slam and after a few minutes the others trooped, led by Piper, who was staring at her British Museum ID pass. "- still don't see why you couldn't have used a better one, I look like I just crawled out of bed... hi, anything in the book?"  
  
"Nope, nada," said Paige. "Did you find it? Or was that too optimistic?"  
  
Piper slumped in a chair and smiled sarcastically. "Waaayyy too optimistic, honey. Place was like Fort Knox, head of security made lots of qualified denials and according to Hawkeye here," she waved at Tom, who raised his eyebrows, "...he was recording the talk for the shadowy Mr Cunningham. I, SO, didn't like that place."  
  
"Hawkeye?" quizzed Phoebe. Tom shrugged. "In our job you have to notice things."  
  
Cole cleared his throat and put his hands in his pocket. "Well we've noticed something here," and he explained about the timing connection.  
  
Theresa muttered something that made Tom laugh. "Swearing in Gaelic is very helpful," he explained, "when no-one else knows what you're saying." Then he frowned. "We should have spotted that. And you're right, how did he know?"  
  
There was a sudden muffled shout of "Piper?" far below.  
  
"Up here, sweetie," called Piper, and Leo ran up the stairs into the room. He did not look happy.  
  
"We have a problem," he began and then stopped when the Charmed Ones gave a collective groan.  
  
"When don't we have a problem?" said Piper.  
  
Leo grimaced but then added: "I know what it is." The others turned and stared at him. "It's the Hammer of Ra."  
  
This did not bring the reaction that he had expected, with the Charmed Ones and their British counterparts collectively shrugging in bafflement. Cole, however, went white. "Please tell me you're joking," he said in a low voice.  
  
"No joke, Cole. I'd never joke about something like that."  
  
Once again Piper made a face as she broke in between the Whitelighter and the demon. "Can you two start with the subtitles again? What is this thing?"  
  
Cole stepped closer to Phoebe, who looked at him puzzled. "The Source has been looking for it for centuries. It's an ancient Egyptian weapon. A very powerful one."  
  
Perching on one of the arms of the chair where his wife was sitting, Leo nodded. "It was built in the time of the Pharaoh Khufu - who built the Great Pyramid. He was a very powerful magic user. The Priesthood of Ra kept it safe in one of their temples, and it was only ever used in anger once." He said the last word with such a grim finality that a pall of silence settled over the room.  
  
Paige broke it. Sitting with her chin on her knees she asked: "What happened?"  
  
Sighing, Leo imitated Cole's earlier gesture by putting his hands together and touching the tip of his nose. Then he looked up.  
  
"The Old Kingdom of Egypt fell apart for lots of reasons. One of them was a scorpion-demon called Argol. Very big, very powerful, very destructive. The last Pharaoh of the Old Kingdom finally lured him into the desert to the west of the Nile. Then he took the Hammer of Ra and... annihilated him. There's a big hole where Argol was standing at the time."  
  
Her eyes narrowing, Piper looked up at her husband. "I recognise that tone of voice. How big a hole?"  
  
Cole answered for the Whitelighter. "It's called the Qattara Depression," he winced.  
  
There was a clatter as Tom knocked the table he was leaning over in shock. "But that's a hundred miles long and at least fifty miles wide!" he exploded. "It's huge!"  
  
Shrugging, the demon said: "That's why the Source wanted it. It's incredibly powerful. In the chaos that followed the fall of the Old Kingdom - even with Argol dead nothing could stop it - the Priests of Ra obviously must have thought that it was safer to bury it. And once they in turn were dead..." He shrugged.  
  
"There's more," said Leo. "There was a prophecy that one day it would be found again." Piper blinked. "When? What does the rest of the prophecy say?"  
  
Leo looked intensely uncomfortable. "We don't know," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. "It's... gone missing."  
  
"How do you lose a prophecy?" exploded Paige. "I thought the whole idea of prophecies was that they turn up at the right moment for the heroes to save the day?"  
  
"Well, it was on a stone tablet in Giza. One of the later Pharaohs had it copied onto papyrus around 500BC... then the tablet was lost, and the papyrus was taken to Constantinople in 450AD and..."  
  
"And?" prompted Phoebe.  
  
"It went missing during the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. It was seen with the last Emperor just before he led his men into a battle which they... well they all died."  
  
"Great!" said Piper, throwing her hands in the air with exasperation. "Why stop when you're having a run of really, truly terrible, bad luck? How can you lose a honking great stone tablet anyway?"  
  
"Calm down, honey, calm down..." soothed Phoebe, before turning back to Leo. "And there isn't any other copy of this prophecy?" The Whitelighter shook his head. "Not that the Elders know about."  
  
There was the sound of a throat clearing. Then Cole said: "I think I know of someone who does. Who may know what is says." He grimaced. "Guess who was in Constantinople when it fell?"  
  
"Nope, our luck just gets suckier and suckier," muttered Piper. "Let me guess... Tethos?"  
  
Cole gave a rueful nod. 


	7. Crimes & Moral Blurrings

I own nahtheeng, I don't have the copyright, I'm just taking the characters out for a quick test drive. Again. Thanks to Gryffindor620 for the reviews & encouragement!  
  
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"Is anyone else worried about how this guy is always a step ahead?" asked Paige plaintively.  
  
Tom snorted. "A step? 550 years would be more accurate!" He looked at Cole. "Sorry, but how sure are you that the befanged one was there?"  
  
Cole tilted his head. "Occasionally Tethos would vanish from the tunnels and go walking in the world above. Whatever Source was in power, they liked to keep an eye on him. Sometimes he'd give his spies the slip and disappear. But I'm sure he was there because I once heard one of the oldest demons in hell talking about things that he'd seen and things that he wished he'd seen. The fall of Byzantium was one that he'd missed, but he added that Tethos had been there."  
  
"Which begs the question," said Molly slowly, "Of what Tethos needs this hammer thing for?"  
  
"Perhaps he wants to kill the Source?" suggested Paige. Cole shook his head.  
  
"He nailed one Source to his own ceiling and has terrified every one since. He could destroy the Source easily now. He could destroy any demon easily now. No, he needs it for something else."  
  
"What could the most powerful demon in hell want with one of the most powerful magical weapons in the world?" asked Phoebe, deeply troubled, but all she got in response was yet another despairing shrug and a flicker of eyebrows from her lover. "He may be a demon..." said Paige, twisting her fingers together, "But he hates other demons. Maybe that's it, maybe he's going to destroy the underworld!"  
  
Cole shuddered. "Not that that's attractive, but if the Hammer of Ra is as powerful as I've heard. Destroying hell would leave a pretty massive scar beneath the earth."  
  
He looked at Paige's blank expression. "I'm not exactly where hell is, physically, but anything over it would head downwards pretty damn fast if hell was reduced to a scorched hole in the ground. And what it might set off in the way of earthquakes, or volcanoes..."  
  
But Paige was unwilling to let go of the idea. "Yeah, but if it's under a desert, or under the sea, what would be okay, wouldn't it?"  
  
This time it was Tom who replied. "Paige, from what I've heard, hell is huge, and I'd rather not gamble with the lives of the people it might be under. And besides, even if it was under the sea, if you drop the seabed even by a couple of metres, the sea would rush in and then bounce around a bit. It would set off tsunami - you know, tidal waves."  
  
He straightened up again and bit back a huge yawn. "I don't think we're doing ourselves any favours here second guessing each other. Leo, did the Elders confirm that there are just three pieces to this thing?" He sighed with relief when the Whitelighter nodded. "Thank god, I'd hate to go haring off after a piece that we didn't know about."  
  
"Each piece has a name," Leo went on. "The main piece is called the Arms of Ra. The square rod is the Fist of Seth and the round one is the Fist of Osiris."  
  
The others took this in. "Dinky names," was Piper's only comment.  
  
"Even if we can get the third piece," wondered Phoebe, "What do we do with it? Guarding it against Tethos would be a bad idea. Bury it in Egypt again? Send it up to the Elders?"  
  
Paige gave Phoebe one of her 'gee, you're dumb' expressions. "We're all witches here. I say we just boogy down to Florida, stick it into a rocket and send it into the sun!"  
  
"Or we could just work out a more practical solution," scowled Piper. "Send it into the sun... Paige, honey, sometimes we can take care of things without blowing other things up. Trust me."  
  
Tom was in the middle of a fantastic grimace, but it was too late and a yawn that was even more massive than the last one broke through. "Um..." he looked at his watch. "When's dusk here?"  
  
"Just after 8pm," replied Cole.  
  
"And it's just after two now. Look, I've had one hour's sleep in 36 hours, and that was in an office in Cairo. I'm going to get my head down for a few hours. If we're going to be up all night, then I really need some shuteye." He turned to Piper. "Can I have a quick sleep in one of the guest bedrooms?"  
  
In an instant Piper was all contrition. "Oh... honey, I forgot that you're still on Europe time. You all must be. Come on downstairs, we've got three bedrooms... It's okay, Prue's bedroom can be used..."  
  
"It's no bother," said Theresa, shyly, and she and Tom held hands quietly. "Two bedrooms."  
  
Piper's right eyebrow shot up and a sly smile lit her face for the first time that day. "Two bedrooms it is..."  
  
************************************************************************  
  
Cunningham was looking into a tall glass cabinet in his display room when there was a soft knock on the door. He turned slightly, unwilling to look away from the gleaming white rod that was sitting on its crystal stand.  
  
"Come on in."  
  
Andrews walked in and this time Cunningham did turn to look at his head of security. He was still in his suit and despite the gleaming white tile floor his shoes were close to being noiseless. Cunningham smiled inwardly. Hiring the former marine had been a stroke of genius. Then he saw the fat folder under his employee's arm and his eyebrows rose almost of their own volition.  
  
"Mah god, that was fast. Ah take it you found something on our visitors?"  
  
The folder came out and Andrews opened it carefully. He held out the first picture for the old millionaire to see properly.  
  
"We've checked out the three British ones. It wasn't easy sir. Kelly is the best hacker on anyone's payroll, period, but he couldn't get all the way into the British Museum's system. Their Room 42 has a security system that stopped him dead in his tracks, it's better than the one the British Security Service uses. The CIA's looks like a school website by comparison. Whatever they're hiding, it's big. But..."  
  
He passed the security camera picture of the four visitors over and then reached for a sheaf of papers.  
  
"We did find mention of them in other systems and also in several papers. They seem to be some sort of artifact retrieval squad. They check out objects held in private collections, other museums, and so on. They also seem to do a lot of foreign travel. I've found references to them being talked of by archaeological societies in France, Canada, Russia, all over the Middle East.  
  
"Durrell has worked there for five years. Impressive academic credentials." He paused as Cunningham let out a loud snort of contempt and muttered something about goddamn paper qualifications, nuthin' like a dose of life to give anyone all the experience anyone needed and that Momma Cunningham's boy never went to no university. Andrews winced inwardly. His employer was clever, calculating and totally ruthless, but he did insist on this whole 'good ol' boy' routine. He wasn't sure how much was an act and how much was real.  
  
When Cunningham finally wound down, he continued: "Atkins joined seven years ago. Similar qualifications, but her father used to work for the Museum before her, in the same department. His name is Joseph Atkins, half Welsh, half Irish, very well respected. Now, Evans is the first joker in the pack. Degree in history but became a journalist. Several local papers, several trade papers, all around London. Welsh parents. No strong ties. He seems, from his work history, to have been something of a wanderer. That changed a year ago, after a visit to San Francisco.  
  
"Something happened - Kelly says that the police record has been erased, pretty permanently too - there was some sort of incident. Apparently someone attacked him at the same time that a gas main exploded. It was odd, anyway. He returned to London, got a job at the British Museum almost at once and seems to have become totally dedicated to his job. Glowing references to him.  
  
"Halliwell is the other joker in the pack. She lives here in San Francisco, used to be a chef, then a restaurant manager, and now she and her sisters are joint owners of a nightclub. But her ID as a deputy to Room 42 is valid - it was okayed in London two days ago, Kelly was able to get that much out of the system. There is more on her, but it's weird. There's a full report in here sir, including mention of the death of her eldest sister Prudence six months ago and the mysterious appearance of a younger half-sister. Oh, and one more thing: Halliwell and Evans are cousins."  
  
"Are they now," said Cunningham, taking the proffered folder. "What about what they said?"  
  
"That part is true sir," answered Andrews grimly. "There's a full report on that too. Whoever broke into the British Museum did it without leaving a trace on the outside of the building, and that alone is enough to worry me."  
  
"And when you worry, Andrews," said Cunningham, looking back down at the artifact, "Other people would be panicking. Do you want authorisation for Team One to patrol tonight?"  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
"Granted. Tell 'em to blow off the head of a gopher if it so much as peeks into the grounds."  
  
************************************************************************  
  
Piper coughed very loudly and then knocked politely on the door of one of the guest bedrooms. There was no response. She listened carefully and then slowly pushed the door open to peek inside. Tom and Theresa was lying on the bed in each others arms, fully clothed and fast asleep. Piper quirked her lips into a wry smile. They looked impossibly cute together. Then she heard a groan and turned to see Molly come out of the other room, yawning and looking... well, mussed.  
  
Molly looked at her blearily. "Any chance of you pointing me in the direction of a shower?"  
  
Piper pointed and then nodded back at the other room. "I get terribly protective of my cousin. How long have they been together?"  
  
Molly grinned. "Eight months. It took four months of urging to get them dating. I swear to god, the first time they saw each other it was like a bad romantic novel, but neither would make the first move. You don't need to worry, they're very good for each other."  
  
Piper nodded. "Yeah, I get the feeling that they are. I'll get you a towel"  
  
By the time that everyone had reassembled, some still yawning, others still damp, the sun was setting.  
  
"Okay," said Leo. "What's the plan?"  
  
Tom leant forward. "I think we need to divide our forces. Theresa and I can get into Cunningham's place, we were talking about it earlier. But at least two people need to stay here I think. The last thing we need is to return here - whatever happens - and discover that there are demons hunting Tethos anywhere nearby. If the Source is hunting this thing as well, we can't risk any other involvement. Besides, the most I can lift is five people."  
  
"Lift what?" asked Phoebe, and got a grin in response. "You'll see. Besides, I think we need a potion or two up our sleeves in case we get back here in a rush. Molly, do have enough here to make up one of your bombs?" Molly nodded.  
  
"Leo, can you stay here with her?"  
  
The Whitelighter pulled a face, but was reassured by a quiet nod from his wife. "If I need you, I'll call you, honey."  
  
Tom nodded. "Let's go."  
  
Piper was getting a crick in her neck as she started up at the top of the wall surrounding Cunningham's mansion. "Is it me, or is that thing taller?"  
  
Tom looked at her. "Piper, it's night. Everything looks different at night." He looked back along the road. "Okay, this is far enough away from the gates and close enough to those trees."  
  
Looking confused, Paige gestured at the wall, the electric fence and the razor wire. "How are we going to get over that?"  
  
"Trust me," said Tom and then he turned back to the wall. "Cole, shimmer over to Pheebs when you hear us call you..."  
  
Cole looked at him with a raised eyebrow and then crossed his arms. "Okay," he said doubtfully.  
  
The Welshman blew out a long breath and then looked up at the wall. Then he brought his hands together slowly and half-closed his eyes.  
  
The Charmed Ones gave a collective frown as they seemed to feel lighter and then suddenly they all gasped as they slowly left the ground. Once they were all a few feet off the ground Tom and Theresa floated up to join them. "No-one freak out at this," said Tom through half-gritted teeth. "Pheebs, you've lost weight."  
  
"Hey!" protested Phoebe and then she changed her mind. "You think? Whoops!" she protested weakly as they all floated upwards, slowly at first and then faster, until they were all in a line over the wall.  
  
"Anything, Cariad?" Tom asked Theresa, whose own eyes were also half- closed.  
  
"Yes..." she breathed. "I can feel them. Six, no, seven. Another on the far side... he's coming now. That's all of them. You can set us down now, we're safe. They're all young and they'll be easy to control."  
  
They slowly drifted all the way over the wall and then returned to the ground. There was a pause and then Cole shimmered into place next to Phoebe. "That was impressive," he conceded. "You've learnt a lot."  
  
Tom grinned at him before turning as the grass ahead rustled slightly and eight massive dogs appeared in front of them. "Theresa," he said warningly.  
  
She looked at him and them crouched down. When her mouth opened she emitted a low, crooning, almost keening noise, which made the dogs tilt their heads as they looked at her. One by one they sat down onto their haunches, before lying onto their bellies, all the time staring at Theresa. The sound that was issuing from her mouth changed slowly, becoming more soothing and the great canine heads started to droop onto their paws. Once all eight were asleep, Theresa straightened up. "That'll do," she said with some satisfaction, "They'll all sleep until morning. You could let a bomb off and they'll still sleep through that."  
  
They ran to the trees quickly, passing through them until they had a clear view of the rear of the floodlit house. "That just leaves the cameras," said Piper, looking back at Tom, who was looking through the binoculars that he had removed from his pack. He seemed to be looking for something.  
  
"Not a problem," he said, narrowing his eyes and glaring across the 100 yards that separated them from the house. "There's just one camera covering that side door there and..." His glare intensified. "Oh dear, what a shame, the main processor inside just fizzled. Cheap Malaysian circuit boards."  
  
"Then let's go!" said Paige, only to feel Tom's hand on her arm.  
  
"Not just yet," he said, and then handed over the binoculars. Paige frowned as she stared at the house, and then gasped as the door beneath the camera flew open and a squad of men dressed in black and carrying what looked like automatic weapons emerged.  
  
"Andrews is an ex-marine, and..." The squad spread out and started to exchange hand gestures as they covered the area. "He's probably left orders to treat every malfunctioning camera as if it was a possible break-in."  
  
They waited for a while as the armed men checked the area out and then paused while a man in dungarees emerged from the door with a stepladder and a toolbox. He positioned the ladder carefully and then shinned up it to inspect the camera. From the way that the he waved his hands and the fact that the leader of the response team slumped his shoulders, it seemed that this wasn't the first time that a camera had suffered a malfunction. All but one of the squad trooped back into the mansion as the maintenance man poked at the camera and pulled bits out. When he went back down the ladder to get to the toolbox, Tom made an inviting gesture to Piper.  
  
"If you could do the honours?"  
  
Piper grinned and gestured. The two figures at the doorway froze. "Let's go!"  
  
************************************************************************  
  
Andrews had had very little sleep, but it barely showed as he walked back into the display room and looked at Cunningham, who had returned to stare at the artifact again. "Ah wonder what this thing is to make someone tear people into beef jerky?" He turned. "Anything?"  
  
"Another bad circuit board in that camera, sir. Not a problem, but I think that we need to review our supply system. That's the third circuit board in a month."  
  
"Well," drawled the old man thoughtfully, "As long as it keeps the folks on their toes. Like... like...." Andrews looked at his employer, who was staring over his shoulder at something and turning a horrible mottled colour in the face. Then he made a terrible choking cry and started to slump to the ground. Instinctively Andrews reached out to catch his employer at the same time that he half turned...  
  
And looked into the face of the demon Tethos... 


	8. Conflict

Here I go again... still don't own the copyright on this, still making the characters go through the rungs of my demented imagination... Please Read and Review folks!  
  
They had had more than a few close calls on the ground floor, but Piper's ability to freeze time had come in very handy. What none of them knew however, was which room Cunningham kept his ill-gotten gains, so they had spread out slightly once they got up onto the first floor. There were fewer offices and almost no people here. Andrews' office had been empty when they crept by and now they were starting to head inwards to the middle of the building, Cole leading and Tom acting as the rearguard.  
  
Just as Cole walked cautiously around a corner and into a long corridor that ended in a pair of double doors, they heard it: the sharp crack of an automatic pistol in the room ahead, followed by a hoarse shout and a succession of further shots.  
  
"Damn!" groaned Cole, and hurtled down towards the door. Behind him Phoebe protested: "No, Cole, wait for us!"  
  
It was too late - Cole smashed through the doors and skidded to a halt on the tiled floor of the room inside with a startled yelp. In front of him an old man was lying on the floor, while close by another man was holding a smoking gun in shaking hands. He was staring incredulously at Tethos, who in the middle of shaking himself slightly. There was a slight clatter as several uneven discs that had once been bullets fell out of his robes and onto the floor.  
  
"That can't hurt me," Tethos was saying to the man as Cole entered.  
  
Cole stretched out his hand and filled it as much white and blue energy as he could handle in his cupped palm. "Try this then!" he said and launched the ball of energy straight at the side of the red demon's head. There was a 'sphut' noise and the energy ball weakly fizzled away into nothingness as it impacted. Cole gaped and then launched another one, with the same result.  
  
Tethos looked at him and then sighed. "Balthazar," he said wearily. "I never thought that you would lower yourself to take the Source's coin. What's the bounty now? I always thought that you were smarter than that." He reached up and, opening his taloned hand, grasped a handful of air. "Goodbye Balthazar."  
  
Cole felt an invisible iron hand clamp itself to his throat and start to squeeze as he was lifted upwards, his feet leaving the ground and his back slamming into the wall behind him. He reached down desperately, but there was nothing to grasp, nothing he could do to stop this terrible remorseless squeezing on his windpipe. He choked and the edges of his sight started to go black... and then Phoebe charged into the room with her sisters and the others.  
  
"No!" she screamed and threw herself in front of Cole. Tethos blinked and stepped back and whatever force he was using to hold Cole eased. Clutching at his bruised throat Cole slumped down to his knees and coughed raggedly.  
  
Things happened rapidly then. Phoebe flicked her coat open and pulled out a long throwing dagger, twirled it by the blade carefully and then launched it at Tethos, Paige gestured to disintegrate the demon and Tom and Theresa both launched bolts of lightening at him. Andrews took the time to stop gaping at the newcomers and then flicked a release on his automatic, threw the empty magazine away, slapped a new one in and started blazing away. "What the hell is this thing?" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "And can someone check on Mr Cunningham?!"  
  
Tom gestured with his free hand and Cunningham slid to one side, allowing Paige to check his pulse. She looked up and shook her head.  
  
By now there was quite a large cloud of smoke where Tethos had been standing. Then there came a loud roar of anger and the demon stepped out, unharmed and crumpling Phoebe's dagger as if it was made of tinfoil.  
  
"What is this?" he demanded, looking at Phoebe. "You're witches! How can you protect that... thing!" he pointed at Cole, who had recovered enough to stand. "It's a demon! The demon Balthazar! It works for the Source of All Evil!"  
  
"Not any more," replied Phoebe evenly, standing in front of Cole protectively. "He doesn't work for the Source any more!"  
  
Tethos glowered at her. "Evil is evil," he hissed.  
  
"Look who's talking," said Piper and then recoiled as Tethos threw back his hood and directed a red-eyed glare at her. There were more bony protrusions on his cheekbones and temples, and his long black hair was tied back.  
  
"What would you know of evil? Real evil?" He stepped back a pace. "I've wasted enough time here," he said and stamped on the floor with one clawed foot. There was a sudden whooshing noise and a crackling wall of red energy shot up in front of him, dividing the room in two.  
  
Piper gestured to freeze the energy and then looked down in bafflement at her hands as nothing happened. She gestured again and then stared at Tethos, who was pulling his hood back into place. He chuckled. "Try all you like. You'll never freeze that." Turning, Tom called over to Andrews. "Where is it? Tell us?"  
  
The head of security came out of his daze and stared at him. "What are you doing here?"  
  
"We don't have bloody time for this! Where's the rod? The picture we showed you? Where is it??"  
  
The former marine looked around the room and then pointed - to a display cabinet beyond the energy barrier. "There."  
  
The witches stared impotently as Tethos walked towards the cabinet.  
  
"Tom can't you..." started Theresa, but Tom shook his head angrily. "I can't feel it... can't summon it."  
  
The demon stopped and looked down at the white rod, his teeth gleaming white in a smile that looked obscene on his face. Then he leant down and breathed gently on the glass, which rippled and melted away, dribbling down to the floor.  
  
As he reached for the last piece of the Hammer of Ra, Paige let out a squeak of desperation. "Fist of... Osiris!"  
  
Just before Tethos's talons closed around the rod it disappeared upwards in a storm of white and blue fireflies before rematerialising in the hands of the startled young witch who let out a whoop of triumph.  
  
Then she turned to hear a loud crash as an enraged Tethos threw the remains of the cabinet against the wall. "Give me that!" he bellowed.  
  
"Um... nope! Guys, get close, Cole get Mr security out of the way."  
  
Tethos was halfway across the room now and was gesturing to part the energy wall he had erected. The Charmed Ones grasped hands with Tom and Theresa and then suddenly they were gone in the whirling flash of a Whitelighter. The demon blinked as he skidded to a stop and then looked at Cole as he grabbed Andrews' arm.  
  
"See you around, Tethos," he grinned and the two shimmered out.  
  
Every piece of glass in the room shattered as Tethos let out a bellow of anguish that shook the floor.  
  
*********************************************************************  
  
The sudden reappearance of the five in the middle of the hallway didn't do very much to Molly's nerves, which were stretched enough as it was. Fortunately she refrained from throwing the potion bomb that she'd just finished making.  
  
"Damn it," she yelped, "Give some bloody warning next time!"  
  
Leo emerged in the doorway and then let out a sigh of relief as he saw his wife, who he wrapped up into a heartfelt hug. "Did you get it?"  
  
Paige grinned proudly and held up the Fist of Osiris. "Yeah, but I almost forgot what it was called when I orbed it over. Almost called it the Fist of Whatsit."  
  
"Where's Cole?" asked the Whitelighter.  
  
"He's dealing with Andrews, the head of security there," said Tom seriously. "We might have a problem here. We arrived to find Andrews shooting at Tethos and this bloke Cunningham lying at their feet."  
  
Wincing Leo looked down at Piper. "Was he... ripped up like the others?"  
  
"No..." she replied slowly, looking back up at him. "That's the funny thing, he wasn't physically harmed that I could see. Paige honey, you checked him, what happened to him?"  
  
She shrugged. "I think it was his heart. I've seen a heart attack and this looked like it. He was kinda old."  
  
The air shimmered and Cole reappeared, rubbing at his bruised neck. Slumping onto the sofa he smiled at painfully at Phoebe, who was running her hands gingerly around the marks on his neck. "I dumped him just outside the front door, told him not to go anywhere near the room until Tethos had left and then shimmered out. He didn't seem very happy."  
  
"I can imagine said Piper dryly. Then she perked up. "Maybe our luck is changing?"  
  
*********************************************************************  
  
Gorgos shimmered warily into the room and then blinked at the devastation around him. Cabinets were lying around him in shattered pieces and the tiles were slippery with shattered glass and scattered artefacts. There was no sign of anyone, but the demon could hear a rumble of voices far below. Through a broken set of doors he could see a corridor that must have led to a window, for he could see the flashing blue and red lights of the police cars he'd glimpsed outside reflected on the walls.  
  
He sniffed carefully. There were so many scents here. Death was one of them and he licked his lips in delight as he savoured the smell. Someone had died here... and the smile died as he smelt the other odours that permeated the room. Witches had been here... at least four or five, he wasn't sure. And something else, he puzzled. Something had the stench of a Whitelighter, but it felt wrong, different somehow.  
  
The other two smells were distinctive though. Tethos had been here, and Gorgos snarled in hatred and fear. And so had... Balthazar. The snarl redoubled in ferocity. That meant that the Charmed Ones had been here.  
  
Gorgos sniffed around the room, trying to work out what had happened. The best he could work out - humans had been here, too many of them, fouling the air and confusing the scents - there had been some kind of fight, between the witches and Tethos. Who had won? He was unsure until he found a small crystal object that had somehow escaped the destruction of the room. That half-witch, half-Whitelighter stench was strong there.  
  
Gorgos straightened up and threw the object to the ground. So, the Charmed Ones had the last piece.  
  
The Source would be very interested to hear that. 


	9. Plans

This actually getting quite creepy, this part just appeared in my head with none of the normal plot planning that I do at the last moment. Well, here it is. None of the characters belong to me, I'm just taking them out for a test drive. -Bows to Gryffindor620-  
  
The warehouse had been empty for a long time, almost 10 years in fact. The lathes that had once lined the floors had long since gone, the workers scattered, the management gone to better, more profitable ventures in countries that didn't have quite such... bothersome labour laws. Only a few rotten packing cases remained here and there.  
  
There had been talk of converting it into a nightclub, but the owner of the lease had died, his heirs had squabbled over the will and now only the lawyers remembered where it was. Strictly speaking, if ownership was 9/10ths of the law, then the rats owned it.  
  
But the rats had deserted the warehouse, had left it with a suddenness that had first surprised and then delighted the stray dogs in the area, which were able to feed to their hearts content.  
  
The reason for the rats' terror shimmered into the middle of the warehouse and punched a hole straight through the nearest packing case, before ripping it to splinters. Then the hooded figure stopped and stared down at his hand, before dropping both arms to its side.  
  
Tethos was still angry, but the powerful rage that had almost consumed him earlier on no longer had him in its grip. A chill ran through him as he remembered the night's events. I can't afford to lose my grip now, he thought savagely, I can't afford to squander centuries of planning and effort now. It's now or never.  
  
He looked back down at his hand and shivered. It had been too long since he had last performed the Ritual. The Fist of Osiris had to wait for a few hours, the Ritual took precedence. And he could also use the time to ponder the last part of the prophecy. He still didn't know exactly what it referred to.  
  
The old demon held up his hand, palm down and whispered the first part of the ritual. Slowly at first, but then with gathering brightness tiny yellow stars of light appeared on the floor all around him. They flashed once, twice, and then a series of lines, straight here, curved there, appeared, snaking out to join the stars. Once the glowing symbol was complete, Tethos knelt and started the second, more painful, part of the Ritual. He would be able to get the third part of the Hammer of Ra soon. And no one would be able to stop him.  
  
*********************************************************************  
  
Paige looked at Phoebe as she ran a honing stone down the blade of the biggest axe she had ever seen in her life. "Gee, if he crumpled that shiny dagger thing of yours into a pretzel, what makes you think that will make a mark on him?"  
  
Her sister stopped honing and raised an eyebrow. "Do you have any better suggestions? Because right now we need all the weapons we can get."  
  
She paused, watched Paige finally shrug and then went back to her work. After a while she looked around the silent room. Tom and Leo were both examining the Fist of Osiris in minute detail, Cole was in the kitchen bathing his neck, Theresa was staring out of the window and Molly and Piper were sitting in chairs looking slightly lost. The initial elation at getting the artefact had long since ebbed away. They all knew that once Tethos located the third piece there was very little that they could do to stop him from claiming it.  
  
The clock struck five. Dawn was almost there. Time to get people motivated, she thought grimly. Then a different thought struck her. "Molly, why do you call that potion of yours a bomb?"  
  
The English witch looked up and grinned for the first time that night. "Because it's so bloody powerful." She looked proud for a moment. "It probably can't hurt Tethos, but it might slow him down a bit."  
  
Piper looked up at this. Potions were her chosen area of expertise. "What's in it?" In response Molly ran down a long list of ingredients with increasingly mundane names. Piper's jaw dropped. "You mix all those? Nothing exotic?"  
  
Molly shook her head. "Why, what else can you use?"  
  
Piper smiled herself and then beckoned to Molly. "Follow me and take a look at our cabinet of eye of newt and things that go bloop in the night... we might be able to give your bomb a little more bang for its buck!"  
  
Phoebe blinked. So much for jazzing up Piper. She turned as Cole walked back into the room and sat down next to her. "Nice axe," he muttered and then looked over to Tom and Leo. "What do you think?" he asked.  
  
Tom looked up and then slumped back. "I don't know. I can't feel anything from it. There's no power in it, no..." he trailed off helplessly.  
  
"And it doesn't seem to be able to point towards the other pieces," said an equally aggravated Leo. He looked back down at it. "Whoever dismantled this thing did a good job. I can't feel anything from it at all either. It's like a hole in the universe. We've got too many questions and not enough answers."  
  
"I've got another question," said Paige thoughtfully. "Why didn't he kill us?"  
  
"What? Who?" asked Phoebe, pausing in her quest to get the perfect edge to her already razor-sharp axe.  
  
"Tethos. He could have killed us back there, all of us."  
  
"He made a good stab at trying to kill me," growled Cole, rubbing his neck gingerly. "Yes, but that's my point. He didn't, not once we arrived. He thought that you were still working for the Source, so that's why he tried to kill you, but once Pheebs was in between you and him... he stopped. He could have killed that security guy as well. But he didn't," she said, her hands shooting out in emphasis.  
  
"He killed Cunningham," protested Theresa.  
  
"No," Paige twisted in her seat to face Theresa, "The old guy died of a heart attack. He was untouched. Don't you get it? In London, and Egypt, he shredded people. Why not us? Why not the guys back at the house? We're missing something."  
  
"She's right," breathed Tom. "But what?"  
  
*********************************************************************  
  
The room was silent now. The Source stood there, looking up into the darkness, seeing the silent form pinned to the ceiling. Occasionally he made himself come here. It made his skin crawl to see one of his predecessors in such a helpless state, but it was a valuable lesson. Never overreach yourself. Always have patience. And always kill off your potential enemies as soon as they stop becoming useful.  
  
He was almost glad that Malchance was quiet. More often than not the ancient demon was a screaming, gibbering wreck, threatening to cut out the beating heart of Tethos with a blunt knife one minute and then weeping and saying that he was sorry, just please take the bolts out, just for a minute, pleasepleaseplease he was sorry he had hurt her, hurt all of them...  
  
Pathetic. But sometimes he was almost lucid, you could have a sensible conversation with him. For a little while at least.  
  
The Source turned and walked out into the corridor and back to the new throne room, where, he was sure, there would be a new list of disasters and failures to be reported. Gorgos, he knew, had failed for a third time. That would be a death sentence unless the wretch had some good news to report.  
  
And he doubted that.  
  
*********************************************************************  
  
Piper looked up from the cauldron and grinned at the little glass flask. Between her and Molly they had brewed up a potion that should be able to blow the claws off the Source himself. The kitchen looked like a bomb had exploded in it and her best potion saucepan would need a week of soaking before the gunk from experimental version #14 could be scrubbed out, but they finally had a winner.  
  
She linked arms with Molly and they marched out of the kitchen and into a room full of sleeping people.  
  
"Hey!" she cried indignantly. "Some of us have been up brewing a super- duper potion bomb!" She nudged Leo, who came awake with a start. "Some guards you are!"  
  
"Sorry, honey," said the Whitelighter with a yawn. "We kind of talked ourselves out here. We were trying to work out why Tethos didn't kill you back there."  
  
Piper tilted her head. "Good question." Then she held up the potion. "Meet the latest in Anglo-American cooperation."  
  
Phoebe rubbed her eyes. "Good. We're gonna need all the weapons we have, like I said. And we're going to have to fortify this place, as well as working on a spell that can use the power of three to vanquish him." She sighed. "Paige is right, though. We're missing something."  
  
Her youngest sister tried to de-muss her hair and looked at Piper. "Now I know what you felt like yesterday morning." Piper raised her eyebrow mockingly at Paige.  
  
"You get used to it. What's next? Anyone got any ideas?"  
  
Leo turned to her. "I'm going to ask the Elders if they have any more information."  
  
"The rest of us are going to hole up here and be extra-vigilant," added Phoebe, looking around for her axe.  
  
"And alternatively you could just give it to me now," said a voice by the window and Tethos stepped out from the shadows. "Nice axe," he smiled at Phoebe, as he grabbed it and embedded it deeply into the wall.  
  
Cole swore and leapt to his feet along with Leo, but Tethos simply made a sweeping gesture and both demon and Whitelighter were thrown against the wall, where they slumped down unconscious. He made another gesture and the table rose, turned and swept Tom, Theresa and Molly against the bottom of the stairs.  
  
Phoebe danced back, swivelled and kicked, only to find her foot held in one taloned hand. "Impressive," he said and then he flipped her over into the sofa, which fell backwards. "And as for you," he pointed at Paige, "Sleep...." The young witch closed her eyes and collapsed back to the chair that she'd risen from, where she started to snore slightly.  
  
There was a blur as a small vial flashed through the air and exploded against his robe. Smoke hissed out and suddenly he was enveloped in a thick miasma of vapour. "Yes!" cried Piper in triumph.  
  
"Ow," said a voice from the smoke, and Tethos stepped out again, beating at a small flame on his robes where the potion had hit. "Not bad, you've got talent." He gestured and Piper staggered backwards into the next room, where there was a crash.  
  
The demon looked around the room and then saw the Fist of Osiris lying where it had fallen from the table. "At last," he breathed and stooped down for it.  
  
But just before his hand could close around it there came a cry of "Oh no, you don't buster!" and Piper burst back into the room. She was wobbling on shaky legs and there was a long cut on her forehead, but she threw herself forwards, her hand reaching out for the artefact...  
  
Tethos grabbed one end, Piper had hold of the other, and as the demon shimmered out Piper went with him. 


	10. Desperate Measures

Once again, apologies for the lack of updates over the weekend. I was busy taking the dog on two-mile walks through endless mud and wind and then lying on sofas, drinking beer and reading books. Just to remind any watching lawyers, I don't own the copyrights, but if I did I'd be a rich man. Bugger it, my life sucks! Thanks to Gryffindor620 for reviews, you are great! ===============================================================  
  
By the time that Paige woke up from her unanticipated nap, the Halliwell house was in a total uproar. By the time that the young witch had finished rubbing her eyes and yawning, her ears alone were telling her that something was very wrong. Then memory returned and she bolted from her chair and looked around wildly. Not seeing the red-skinned demon she relaxed very slightly. Then she stared at the activity around her.  
  
Molly and Theresa were sitting on the floor, with maps of San Francisco, Central California, the whole of California, North America and finally the world, open around them. They were having an argument about what seemed to wrong with their crystals. Paige was tugging at her axe, which was very firmly embedded in the wall, all the time muttering what appeared to be a number of very juicy swear words.  
  
As for Tom and Cole, they were both trying to calm down an increasingly agitated Leo, who was shouting something about not being able to feel where she was, and it was at that moment that Paige felt genuinely frightened for the first time. She'd seen many different versions of Leo in the past, she'd seen happy Leo, sad Leo, concerned Leo, determined Leo, injured Leo, patient Leo and once (disturbingly) horny Leo. An angry, bewildered Leo was something new and very unwelcome.  
  
Which led to. "Where's Piper?" she blurted.  
  
Paige looked around from her fruitless tugging and then came over to hug her sister. "Honey," she said soothingly, "We're not sure. Tethos turned up, he swatted the lot of us and then just as he grabbed one end of the Fist of Osiris, Piper grabbed the other and went with him when he shimmered."  
  
"But surely Leo can..."  
  
The older Halliwell shook her head. "He can feel that she's alive, but not where she is. Tethos must have shimmered someplace shielded. We've tried scrying as well but..." she looked back at where Theresa and Molly had given up and were looking down at the maps in twin teary rages, "We can't find her."  
  
Behind them Tom had finally calmed Leo down to the point where he was more or less coherent.  
  
"How much can you feel of her?" he asked the Whitelighter calmly.  
  
With a shiver Leo shrugged. "I can only feel that she's somewhere in-" he paused and turned, before pointing to a point besides the stairs. "That direction. But she could be a mile away, or a hundred miles, or in New York for all I know!"  
  
Tom and Cole exchanged glances. "Triangulate?" the demon asked.  
  
"Let's try it," said the Welshman, before turning to Phoebe. "Pheebs, do you still have your father's compass?"  
  
She gave him an odd look. "Yeah, but why do you need that for?"  
  
Walking over he picked up the maps from the floor, bent over to kiss the top of Theresa's head and then strode back to the table. "Leo can feel roughly which direction she's in. If we take a bearing along where he thinks she is with the compass-"  
  
"And then go to as many places as we can and take other bearings-" added Cole.  
  
"Which we plot on a map, we should be able to pin down roughly where she might be," finished Tom. "We'll need the compass, a pencil, all the maps and a lot of luck, but we can do it."  
  
The two Halliwells present exchanged glances, before Paige voiced their fear: "What if he's in Hell?"  
  
Shaking his head Cole walked over to the axe, which was still stuck in the wall. "No," he said, putting a hand on its handle "He'd never go back with everything so stirred up down there. He'd have bounty hunters popping down like flies around molasses. No, Tom's right, Piper is our best shot at finding him." There was a grating noise and he grunted as he pulled the axe free. "And when we find him, we hurt him."  
  
************************************************************************  
  
Cold, thought Piper, groggily. Feel cold. Must get Leo to fix the air conditioning again. Then memory returned and she opened her eyes. From the sight of the dank concrete floor she obviously wasn't at home. Carefully she raised her head and sat up.  
  
"Okay," she muttered, "I've woken up in nicer places." Frowning she prodded mentally at her scrambled memory. She remembered Tethos arriving - swiping everyone out of the way. Funny that, he hadn't killed anyone. She remembered flying through the air, to land on the washing basket and hitting her head on the side of the ironing board, somehow getting up, running on legs that felt like jello, grabbing one end of the artifact and then appearing here... and then falling asleep. She had a vague recollection of a very surprised sounding voice saying something, but that was the last thing she could recall.  
  
There was a slight sound and she turned to see Tethos looking down at her.  
  
"You're incredibly persistent," he said, turning the Fist of Osiris over and over in his hands. "You don't have the faintest chance of hurting me, but you still try. Oh, by the way, look down."  
  
Unwillingly she risked a short glance and then stopped and stared. She was sitting in a ten-foot circle formed by a glowing red line that seemed to pulse on the concrete. Pulling out a quarter from her pocked she flicked it in the air. There was a sizzling noise and it bounced back. "Energy barrier?" she guessed.  
  
The demon tilted his head. "Close enough," he said. "It won't kill you, but it will repel you. Don't worry, I'm not in the habit of imprisoning humans. I'm going to do what I need to do and then... you'll be free to go."  
  
Pulling her hair back in place over her back Piper got to her feet. "Yeah," she sneered, "Like I believe that. I've heard the lies that demons spout... like a big..." she paused, unable to find the right metaphor, "Spouty thing," she finished lamely.  
  
Tethos sighed. "Don't believe me then. And this place is shielded, so I wouldn't expect a rescue anytime soon. But I won't harm you."  
  
"Like you didn't harm that security guard in London?" said Piper accusingly. "Or that archaeologist in Egypt?"  
  
On the point of turning away, Tethos snapped his full attention back to the witch. "What are you talking about? I've never killed anyone human. Not since... I became a demon. I didn't see anyone in London, and the only person I met in Egypt was a frightened security guard whom I left scared. Explain yourself."  
  
"There was a guard in the British Museum in the room you stole the main part from," said Piper, feeling slightly bewildered at the vehemence with which Tethos had spoken. "He was torn to pieces, I've seen the pictures. And again in Egypt with the other piece. So why the hell should I believe you?"  
  
By now Tethos was looking even grimmer than before, if such a thing was possible. "Gorgos," he growled. "That piece of cowardly vermin. I knew he was tracking me for the Source... but he was always too late to find me. But not anyone else. That sneaking worm! I'm going to rip his ribs out one by one and eat his heart! Typical demon, taking his frustrations out on the innocent!"  
  
By now Piper was totally confused. She had no idea if Tethos was telling the truth, and she had no idea who Gorgos was, but she could almost feel the frustration roll off the red-skinned demon. Tethos' last remark did get to her though.  
  
"But you're a demon as well! And the reason we're being so persistent is that we know better than to leave the Hammer of Ra in the hands of a demon. I don't care what you say, we're not going to risk the world being destroyed or you blowing up this Gorgos, whoever he is, along with any nearby cities, or whatever demon-like plan you have in mind!" She folded her arms and directed her best Halliwell glare at him.  
  
Tethos looked at her and then threw his head back and laughed, the sound echoing around the empty warehouse. "End the world! Blow up Gorgos! I know of at least three portals that could end the world by dropping it into a hell dimension, and I've closed all of them! And killing Gorgos with the Hammer? I wouldn't give him the honour! No," he stopped laughing, and a rather sad expression stole over his face. "I've got a different plan for the Hammer. I can tell you, because you're probably going to see it anyway, little as you believe me anyway.  
  
"I'm going to kill myself with it." 


	11. The Burden of Time

Again, no copyright, yadadada. This started off as being quite hard to write, I have no idea why. But then it all fell into place and just wrote itself. Very creepy. Enjoy! And R&R, don't let Gryffindor620 do all the work please!  
  
=============================================================== If the atmosphere had been tense before, it was doubly so now. Molly had concentrated the potion that she and Piper had work on before and was ladling it out very carefully into bottles in the kitchen. "One of these things made him go 'ouch,'" she said grimly. "Lets see what ten will do. A scream of agony is all we need to get Piper out."  
  
Phoebe was honing her axe again, and in the process making a noise that was putting Paige's teeth on edge. She was about a second away from snapping something irritable at her sister when Tom and Leo orbed in, followed a second later by Cole.  
  
"-still don't see why we couldn't have just checked the place out," Leo was saying testily to the two others as he appeared.  
  
"Because we don't want to give him any warning at all," replied Tom as he dropped the crumpled maps onto the table, followed by a pencil and the compass. He looked up and grinned at the others. "We've found them." He pulled out a map of San Francisco. Dozens of lines had been drawn from different points all around the bay, converging on a point in downtown San Francisco. "They're somewhere near an abandoned warehouse just off China Bay."  
  
Phoebe looked up at that. "Big place, double doors on the outside, next to an old fire station?" she asked.  
  
Everyone stared at her. "Let me guess, you had a premonition?" asked Cole, slightly aggrieved.  
  
She shook her head. "Piper, Prue and I checked the place out once when we were looking for a better location for P3. It's owned by a pack of lawyers who've been putting on and off the market for years. We turned it down because it would taken too much money to convert and we didn't want the customers to be freaked out by all the rats in the area."  
  
"Oh," said Cole. "And I was all set to complain about premonitions and bad timing." He looked around at the others, who were all looking grim as he felt.  
  
"We're going to scout the place out first and then make our move once we know where she is. If we see the Hammer, we take it with us and Leo orbs it up to the Elders. If anyone gets in our way we take them down. Any questions?"  
  
There was total silence in the room.  
  
"Let's go get your sister back," Cole said to Phoebe and, reaching out his hand to grasp hers, they shimmered out as Leo and Paige orbed the others away.  
  
************************************************************************  
  
Piper stared at Tethos. "I've never heard of a suicidal demon," she said scornfully. "Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Whatever that means. I've been hanging around Brits too much." She folded her arms again.  
  
He looked at her and smiled. It looked as if there was a lot of pain behind it. "You have no idea, little witch, no idea at all."  
  
The response was a growl. "No idea of what?"  
  
The smile evaporated away. Tethos turned away for a moment and his hand slashed the air carefully. There was a white flash and a... Piper stared... rent appeared in midair, through which she could see the wall of the warehouse, but bathed in some kind of odd light, as if the life had been sucked out of all the colours. Tethos pushed his arm through. When it came back he was holding the joined up other two parts of the Hammer of Ra.  
  
"No idea of what it's like to be a demon," he said and waved his free hand. The rent sealed itself with a snap. "To have evil within you. To fight it every minute of a day and refight that same battle the next day and the day after and the day after that."  
  
"I know what it's like," she said, somewhat startled by his words. "I've talked to Cole. You call him Balthazar."  
  
Tethos turned back. "Yes, I was going to ask you about that. He seemed very different to the last time I saw him. It was like looking at the sun trying to come out from behind a cloud."  
  
Having no idea what the last sentence was about, Piper shrugged. "He's in love with my sister, Phoebe."  
  
That did get a response. Tethos stared even harder at her. "A demon in love with a witch? And you have a Whitelighter with you - and someone who felt both witch and Whitelighter. That's a strange combination. A powerful one too."  
  
She stared at him. "You really have no idea who you're messing with, do you?"  
  
The Fist of Osiris came out of the inside of his cloak as Tethos laughed softly.  
  
"Not that I care," he said as he started to push the final piece into the Hammer of Ra, "But who are you? Don't tell me that you're the Charmed Ones, born into the world at last?"  
  
"Boy, you really don't mix with the other demons, do you? Yes, we are the Charmed Ones."  
  
Tethos almost dropped the Hammer as the final piece clicked into place.  
  
************************************************************************ Down in his throne room the Source came out of his seat with a jerk and stared at a point in the ceiling. Then he growled in frustration. The Hammer was complete. If that fool Gorgos made a hash of things now... He pulled a short black rod out of a hidden pocket. Tethos was strong... but strength could be beaten with cunning...  
  
************************************************************************  
  
He was staring at Piper again. Then he threw his head back and laughed again, a long and very heartfelt laugh. "Oh, so that explains why the Source has been hatching his plots like a demented hen!" he said, when he finally stopped chuckling. "Oh, dear, I haven't laughed like that since I heard Nixon's resignation speech. He was an idiot as well."  
  
Tilting her head Piper looked at him. "You're very cheerful for a supposedly suicidal demon," she muttered.  
  
Tethos sighed and placed the Hammer on an invisible surface. "Did Balthazar tell you about me? About what I did?" Receiving a nod, he scratched his nose with a talon.  
  
"I'm a thousand years old," he began. "I was born in 991 by the Christian calendar. I've seen a lot in my time, walking in the world of men after I was damned. I saw Viking longboats sail down the Menai Straits. I saw William the Bastard walk out of Westminster Abbey and into the smoke of the buildings burnt by his men during his coronation. I was at Runnymede to see an idiot called John sign Magna Charta, and at Bosworth Field to see Richard of Gloucester charge to his death against Henry Tudor. I've seen Jerusalem fall so many times that they all merge into one."  
  
He sat down onto what appeared to be an invisible chair.  
  
"I saw the last defenders of Byzantium march to what they knew would be their deaths. I saw Charles Stuart go to his so-called martyrdom. I once got drunk with Peter the Great. I watched Frederick the Great pass by on the way to Rossbach and I saw Napoleon the First ride with his marshals to the slaughter in the snow that was Eylau. I heard the roar of 'Douro, Douro!' from the Portuguese soldiers at Sorauren shake the hills when they saw the Duke of Wellington arrive to stop the French. I heard the guns of Verdun and the Somme. I have seen enough death to sicken even the Source.  
  
"And all though that time, all through those years, there wasn't a day that went by when I didn't think about my wife and my son. I loved them both, and my brother, so dearly but they've been dead for centuries and I will never see them again. Ever. And you wonder why I want to end it? This-" he gestured at the completed Hammer. "Is the one thing strong enough to kill me."  
  
Piper was silent. Then she asked: "How did you know the pieces were being discovered?"  
  
There was a pause as he pulled out a small book. "This. It's a prophecy about the Hammer, although translating it from the original Egyptian was hard. When the first piece was found I could feel it through the earth thanks to the prophecy. 72 years later the second part was found, and then recently the last part. The prophecy mentions the "man of darkness from the northern cold mountains who looks to the light." That's what 'Tethos' means in the old language. Some Egyptian priest saw me in a vision thousands of years before I was born. That kind of thing shakes you."  
  
"Tell me about it, I know how that feels," muttered Piper. "How did you get hold of the prophecy?"  
  
"The last Byzantine Emperor gave it to me. He knew who I was - what I was - but he gave it to me as he went to his death. Said to remember the light, to fight the good fight even at the time when things were at their darkest. I took it, read it, and planned this."  
  
There was a quite moment in the warehouse, broken only by a faint splashing from one corner where water was dripping down the wall and onto an office partition that was slowly falling apart.  
  
Suddenly Tethos sniffed the air. "Company," he growled. Then he smiled. "Gorgos."  
  
Turning with the speed of a striking snake his hand went out, hooked into empty air and pulled. There was a crash and a struggling form smashed through the walls of the office and came crashing to the floor where it bounced hard enough to make Piper wince. It was tall, violently hairy and extremely ugly as it swayed upright and gazed at Tethos with a look that combined abject terror with defiance. It hissed, smiled and then gaped at the floor.  
  
"Sorry," said Tethos, "No shimmering in here. I've set up a few booby traps and I doubt that a maggot like you has the strength to break the shielding on the building anyway. Getting in is easy. Getting out will be a challenge that you won't have to face, because," his hand went out again and suddenly Gorgos was clawing at his throat and making choking noises as he slid across the floor towards the red-skinned demon, "You won't live that long."  
  
Gorgos slid to a halt and then gasped with relief as whatever grasp Tethos had around his neck vanished. The older demon leant forward and sniffed the air. "Harold Smith and Ibrahim Nasser. You killed them both, didn't you?"  
  
He leant forwards and gazed into the face of the now terrified demon. "This is for the innocents you've killed, maggot."  
  
Tethos pushed Gorgos with a deceptive slowness and suddenly the intruder was moving faster and faster, sliding towards the wall at an increasing speed. At the moment that he slammed into it with bone-cracking force a bolt of fire shot out of Tethos's hand.  
  
Gorgos had just enough time to scream once before it hit the centre of his chest and he exploded into a gout of fire.  
  
"Hopefully," said Tethos, adjusting his robe, "He wasn't able to report back to the Source."  
  
"Wrong," said the Source as he appeared behind him. 


	12. Fighting Evil

This chapter is slightly shorter than I'd planned, due to a sudden attack of aggravated plot bunnies that unexpectedly vanished after I took my dog for a muddy two-mile walk in the dark. I worry about myself sometimes, I really do. It's a bad idea to walk in a forest at night with tendrils of fog wrapping around you. Gave me a bad attack of imagination. Brr. Thanks again to Gryffindor620 for reviews. I'm not sure what's more boring, school or work, but both have given me a love of writing.  
  
*********************************************************************  
  
There was a crackle and suddenly the Source brought up his hand. Piper could see that he was holding a small black wand that was making a highly unpleasant noise, like paper being scrunched rapidly. It flashed suddenly and then, before Tethos could finish whirling around, a beam of black lightening struck him full in the back.  
  
Tethos screamed, a noise of such anger and pain that Piper had to hold her hands over her ears, a noise that rebounded around the warehouse and drove the dust down from the roof beams.  
  
The wand was making a new noise now, a staccato yelp, and then the lightning was changing, to wrap its way around the red-skinned demon, holding him in a tight skin of moving darkness. When the Source finally lowered the rod, Tethos was frozen in place, a silent, unmoving statue.  
  
"Even the strongest of us can be brought low," said the Source in a highly satisfied tone of voice. "Even the mighty Tethos," he spat.  
  
"You may never serve me," he said, addressing Tethos and then looking around at a furious Piper and the Hammer of Ra, which was still hanging in the air, "But things have turned out perfectly. Three birds with one stone. I get rid of an uncontrollable menace who's been skulking around hell for too long, I finally find the greatest magical weapon in the world and-" he walked in front of Piper and folded his hands inside his sleeves.  
  
"I get to break the Charmed Ones by killing one of their most irritating number. I'd like to see the look on the face of your Whitelighter when he finds your smashed and broken body."  
  
The Source broke off and walked over to the white magical weapon. "But first, lets get rid of Tethos." He reached out to grasp the Hammer - only for his hand to pass right through it. Both Piper and the Source goggled. "What?"  
  
"You really are quite thick," said a highly amused voice off to one side. Piper snapped her head around. Tethos was leaning against one of the nearby walls. She looked back at the motionless figure in the middle of the room, which suddenly rippled and dissipated like dust in the wind.  
  
"I've known a lot of Sources over the years," Tethos continued, still sounding amused. "Thin, fat, tall, short, paranoid, schizoid, slightly insane, very insane. One was even slimy, which was unpleasant to look at but made him very easy to track. And you know what, all were equally arrogant, equally convinced that they had more cunning than a weasel. And all were, in fact, equally limited in intelligence. But you're less bright than most of your predecessors."  
  
The Source pulled out the wand again, but this time Tethos was faster. He made a twisting motion with his hand and suddenly the Source was holding a handful of black sand. "How..." he hissed.  
  
"I heard you coming," said Tethos contemptuously. "As I killed Gorgos I heard you start to manifest yourself and so I created the illusion that you were able to disable so well."  
  
The Source hissed again and then suddenly sprang forwards; forming a globe of blue energy in his hands he hurled it straight at his opponent, who caught it in one taloned hand.  
  
"Two out of ten," he said coldly and crushed the globe from existence. The Source hurled another, larger one, which Tethos dealt with just as easily.  
  
Piper could feel what was going to happen next. The Source tilted his head slightly to one side and then threw an equally large energy ball straight at her. She shrieked and pulled her head to one side, but she knew that she couldn't dodge it, it was going to hit...  
  
She blinked. Wasn't it? Then she looked up. The globe was hanging in the air, unable to penetrate the glittering red barrier that had appeared around her - on the same place that the glowing circle had been imprisoning her.  
  
Tethos shook his head again. "Do you really think that I'd let you harm an innocent?" he asked the Source. "Still less one of the Charmed Ones? You are really so painfully obvious." He flicked a finger and suddenly the Source's own energy ball was hurtling back towards its creator, who was barely able to deflect it in time. There was a 'whomph' noise as it demolished the tattered remains of the office next to the one where Gorgos had been caught.  
  
The Source just stood there for a moment, and for the first time in the years that she'd been battling evil, Piper realised that he was frightened. Then he suddenly pulled another wand out of his sleeves and pointed it, shaking slightly, at Tethos, who grinned hugely and flexed his fingers. There was a tinkling noise as the wand fell to the ground in four pieces, leaving the Source to stare at the stub that remained in his hand.  
  
"I've been fighting evil scum like you for a thousand years," said Tethos. "You've been the Source for 70 of those years. Who's going to win this fight? Perhaps I should give Malchance a companion in agony. I nailed him up there to teach his successors a lesson that there are some things that you cannot do. I guess you're all too stupid to learn."  
  
The Source let out a scream of pure absolute rage and started to throw more energy balls at the other demon, twisting the air with shimmering balls of dark light in a desperate attack. Each one was snuffed from existence or broken up as it arrived or deflected back at him.  
  
Then Tethos took a slow step forward and raised his hand menacingly. Something flashed at the Source's throat, like a flutter of dark light, and he took a sudden halting step back.  
  
"No," said the Source in a grating voice, but the fluttering light redoubled in intensity and Piper could suddenly see what appeared to be a ghostly outline of a hand, reaching for the Source's throat.  
  
"No!!" This time the Source screamed the word. "This... is... not... possible... No-one... can... touch... me!!!"  
  
"Meet someone who can," said Tethos grimly, and suddenly pushed his hand forwards, sending the Source reeling backwards. He forced himself upright and flashed into a fiery outline - before reappearing exactly where he had been.  
  
Laughter rang in the air. "I thought you were stronger than that, Source!" said Tethos mockingly. "Little Gorgos couldn't shimmer out. Not strong enough. How about you?"  
  
Increasingly desperate, the Source flashed out again and then reappeared.  
  
"Perhaps you need some incentive?" Tethos turned to Piper. "I'm sorry, I never asked your name. How about it, Charmed One? Would you like to watch me nail the Source to his own ceiling?"  
  
"Piper," she said, nodding in recognition to the demon. "You do the hammering, I'll hold the nails," she added, growling at the Source.  
  
And then a new noise suddenly filled the warehouse, caused by the big padlocked double doors at one end, close to where the Source was standing, blowing off. And the rest of the Charmed ones, plus allies, strode in. 


	13. Culmination

I really should have finished this by now, but I was overtaken by Wales playing Scotland at rugby and me suffering from an acute case of nerves that involved taking the dog for a series of very long walks. Wales then won, which meant that I had to celebrate. A lot. Whoopee! I don't own the sodding copyright on this thing, and I don't care, I'm having way too much fun. Thanks again to Gryffindor 620 for the encouragement and for the patience in not bawling me out!  
  
****************************************************************************   
  


* * *

  
The Source froze. So did Paige, Phoebe and the others. They'd been expecting to come up against Tethos. The Source was an unpleasant surprise. Then Piper called out from behind him: "Tethos, help them!"  
  
Cole's eyebrows went up. "She wants HIM to help US?" Then he blinked as the Source vanished in his usual gout of flame, only to reappear again in the same place. "What was that?"  
  
"He's trying to escape," said Tethos, in an amused voice. The Source drew himself up and directed a glare at him. "I'll deal with you later, renegade," he said, grinding out the words. "And you too, Balthazar." The cowled demon concentrated hard and then flashed out again. This time, he did not return.  
  
"I wonder how long it'll be before he lives that down," rumbled Tethos, before turning and waving a hand. The protective mark around Piper flared and then vanished. "I added quite a few booby traps to the shielding. Once he gets down there, they'll activate and... well, let's just say that he's going to have a very interesting time."  
  
"Piper, honey," said Leo warningly, "what's going on? Why were you calling on Tethos to help us?"  
  
His wife turned and hurried over to him, vanishing into his arms as they hugged. Then she looked up at him. "He didn't kill them," she said. "Those people in London and Egypt. Some skinny hairy thing called Gorgos killed them."  
  
"What?" snapped Cole, looking around wildly. "Gorgos is the Source's personal tracker and sneak. He can track anything alive."  
  
"It seems," said Tethos quietly, "That he was tracking me. The little maggot failed to find the other pieces of the Hammer of Ra before I did. He must have taken out his anger and frustration out on the people he found in the area. If I'd known he was tracking me I'd have hung around and killed earlier than I did." He pointed at the burnt spot on the wall where the demon had died.  
  
Piper's head came up. "The Hammer... where is it? The Source put his hand out but it went straight through it. Another illusion?"  
  
The demon nodded and put his hand out. There was a crack and the Hammer fell out of a rent in the air and onto his hand, where it rested. Tethos looked at Leo and then walked over slowly. "Have you read the prophecy about this thing, Whitelighter?" Leo shook his head. Tethos sighed. "I am not here to fight anyone, I am not here to use the Hammer for evil, you must believe me when I tell you this."  
  
He reached into his robe and removed the book that Piper had seen earlier. "Constantine XI Palaeologos gave me this on the 53rd day of the Siege of Constantinople. The last day of the Siege. He had it from his predecessor, and so on. I'm glad you're here, Whitelighter - Leo, is that right? I've been wondering whom to hand it on to. My part in it is just the start. Take it and give it to the Elders." He handed it over to a stunned Leo.  
  
"You'll get the Hammer in a short time as well. I need it for one last thing. The Source couldn't defeat me but this thing can. It's time for my story to come to a close, Leo. You know my tale. And you know that although I won my fight, every battle must come to an end." He looked over at Cole. "Balthazar. Or rather, Cole. I know the battle that you fight, I've fought it myself." His gaze flickered over to Phoebe, who was still clutching her axe rather uncertainly. "Find the best part of you and fight for something you love."  
  
"I don't understand," said Paige from behind Cole.  
  
"He's going to kill himself," said Leo, slowly. "That's what he needs the Hammer for. We were all wrong. I'm sorry, Tethos, I thought that your dark side had claimed you."  
  
"Then, why," broke in Tom, "Do you look like that? Why do you look so demonic? Why did you seclude yourself in hell when the second piece was found?"  
  
The demon smiled. "You've done your homework on me I see. Understandable if you thought that I was going to blow the world up." He waved his hand again and this time a visible chair appeared behind him, onto which he sat down. "It was in the middle of the '60s, as the time prophesied for the discovery of the second piece approached, that I started to have doubts about my plan to kill myself with the complete Hammer. By 1970, my doubts had grown to be very serious. Why do it? Why not destroy it instead? Then I realised that it was my dark side. All that doubt, all that darkness, whispering in my ears, trying to keep me from what I had pledged to do. My demon side wanted nothing to do with my suicidal impulses. The closer I got to the discovery of the second piece the stronger it became. I needed a way to circumvent it." He smiled painfully. "I found one in the Ritual of Korzalen."  
  
Cole stared at him. "Only two demons have ever had the strength to attempt that," he said softly. "Both died in the process."  
  
Tilting his head to one side, Tethos looked at him. "I know. Third time lucky perhaps. I had the strength and perhaps the desire, the need, to make it work."  
  
The old demon looked back at the others. "No demon - however well- intentioned - has the power to destroy his demon side. But it is possible to externalise it, to purify the inner self by pushing the demon part of you out onto your exterior." He flexed one taloned hand and looked down at it in disgust. "Ironic, isn't it? I look demon, but inside I'm pure. For a while. The Ritual is painful and long and needs to be renewed once a week, or the evil returns into you. I was very angry this morning, when you beat me to the last piece. And I had to perform the Ritual then."  
  
There was a silence. Then Leo cleared his throat. "If you're going to use the Hammer, shouldn't you choose a less populated place? You don't want to turn San Francisco into a hole in the ground like the Qattara Depression."  
  
"I won't have to," he replied. "The last Pharaoh lost control of it, from what I've been able to work out. I'll be using just enough energy to finish me off. And the shield I put on the warehouse should contain the blast once I strengthen it. Please, I've been planning this for some time. Let me do this."  
  
They all stared at each other. There wasn't much they could do, anyway.  
  
One by one they all nodded.  
  
They stood by the doorway, looking through into the warehouse. Tethos was standing in the middle of the floor, holding the Hammer of Ra in one hand. He looked terribly alone as he raised the other hand in farewell, a tired man approaching the end of a long and painful journey.  
  
No one quite knew where to look. Tom and Theresa were holding each other, Paige was biting her lip, Phoebe and Cole were holding hands, Molly was looking slightly lost, and Piper was staring quizzedly at Leo, who had opened the prophecy and was reading it avidly.  
  
"Honey, whatcha doing?" She asked.  
  
"Piper, this thing has been lost since the middle of the fifteenth century, the Elders are going to go nuts when they find out that we have it again and..." he dried up, cleared his throat harshly and then made another attempt at speaking. Piper looked at him and was astonished to see tears in his eyes.  
  
"Honey?"  
  
Leo shook his head and looked back at Tethos, who was slowly raising the Hammer. "In the Whitelighter community he's a legend. The good man who became a demon to save the innocent."  
  
Piper remembered the way that Leo had reacted the previous day when Cole had told them that the thing in the picture was Tethos. "That's why you were so disbelieving," she said quietly. He nodded in response and then returned to look back down at the book. Then he frowned and went back a page before flipping back on.  
  
"Hold on a second," he said, but it was too late.  
  
Cole was staring at Tethos, his mouth open slightly. Only he could see the full force of the power that Tethos was channeling, enough power to awe even him. "He's close," he said, and as he did so the very air in the warehouse seemed to shimmer and ripple like water.  
  
Tethos raised the Hammer up, the energy coalesced and then... nothing.  
  
There was a shocked pause. Tethos looked around, obviously stunned. "Why didn't it work?" he asked, bewildered. "The energy just... died."  
  
And then Leo stepped forwards, still holding the prophecy at the page where he had paused earlier. "I think I know," he said. "I think that you were born to find the Hammer, but not to wield it. The prophecy is vague in places, but it mentions 'Three that fell to two and then became three once again with the finding of the lost.'"  
  
Wrinkling her nose, Paige snorted. "That's not vague, it's opaque!"  
  
But Cole leant forwards. "That sounds very familiar," he said, looking at Phoebe. "The Charmed Ones."  
  
Baffled, Tethos stared at them all. "I thought that it referred to the finding of the Hammer. What do you mean?"  
  
Looking at Phoebe, Piper winced. "We're the second version of the Charmed Ones. Our sister Prue was killed half a year ago. When she died we heard about our little-" Paige stuck her tongue out at her sister. "-pain in the butt of a half-sister who we never knew existed. Paige here. And we were Charmed again."  
  
Tethos looked at them. Then he laughed, quietly. "I've been puzzling over that passage since 1642. Typical, you never see the path until it's shown for you." He shrugged and then walked over to them, his taloned feet making a faint clacking noise on the concrete of the warehouse floor.  
  
"This, then," he said, placing the most powerful magical weapon in the world into Piper's hands, "Belongs to you. Once you have vanquished me, put it in a safe place. The Source may not be able to use it, but he's a devious bastard. Never underestimate him."  
  
He snorted. "Time to say goodbye again."  
  
"Wait a minute," protested Phoebe, "We don't know how to use this thing. What if we blow up the warehouse by mistake? Or San Francisco? Or California?"  
  
Tethos shook his head. "I may not be able to use it, but I was able to set it. I gave it one command, to destroy the demon Tethos. Once you start to use it, it should carry out that command. And like I said, the last Pharaoh lost control of it. You have the Power of Three, as the old tales told. You'll be okay." He paused and then held out his hand to Leo, who took it in a firm handclasp. "I heard what you said, Leo. Tell the Elders to say goodbye to my wife and son for me. And to my brother." Then he turned and walked back to the middle of the warehouse. "Second time lucky, I hope."  
  
Feeling the smooth white main arm of the Hammer of Ra, Piper looked at Phoebe and Paige. They nodded and, walking over to her, grasped the far ends of the Hammer with their hands. Then they raised it and pointed it straight at the old demon, who was smiling now.  
  
"Goodbye," said the Charmed Ones in unison. Tethos bowed in response. "Whatever you're doing to annoy the Source," he called, "Keep it up. And remember, Cole, the battle against the darkness is never in vain." The Hammer quivered suddenly and then started to pulse slowly with light. Startled, Paige looked over at her sisters. Seeing their calm expressions, she relaxed a little.  
  
"Don't worry, honey, just let it take you," Piper whispered, and then the Hammer flared so brightly that the others were forced to look away from the Charmed Ones, as they were enveloped in light. The light built and built, and then suddenly flared away in a great fist of energy, running straight towards the expectant Tethos.  
  
It hit him in the chest and he screamed, a sound that was both agony and joy. A red light that only Cole could see flared briefly, ineffectually, and then started to die as the white energy danced all around Tethos, crackling and pulsing. He opened his eyes and wept tears of blood.  
  
"An ending!" he screamed and then the light around him was too bright for even the Charmed Ones to bear. The energy flared one more time and then there was an explosion that knocked them all to the ground. When they looked back there was nothing but a cloud of evil-smelling smoke where Tethos had been.  
  
The Hammer gave a quiet noise and then went dim again.  
  
"He's gone, then," said Leo as he helped Piper up.  
  
"Um," said Tom. "If he's gone, then who's that?" He pointed to the middle of the warehouse. At the centre of the rapidly clearing smoke they could all see a naked man sprawled unconscious on the floor. He had long black hair and was wearing the tattered remains of a cloak."  
  
"It's Tethos," breathed Leo. "He's human." 


	14. New Beginnings

Usual disclaimers, I don't own the copyright on this thing, I'm just taking the characters out for a spin, honestly! Well, it's been a wild ride that took a few twists that I didn't plan on, but here's the last part of my first fanfic. Wow, what a ride. I hope that everyone who's read it has enjoyed it even half as much as I have enjoyed writing it.   
  


* * *

  
The sun was rising in a cloudless blue sky over San Francisco and the Halliwell Mansion was quiet for the first time in days. Then door opened in the back and a black-haired man in his early thirties walked out. He was dressed in jeans and a shirt; he was holding a cup of hot milky coffee; he bore a look of deep bewilderment on his face. Looking out over the garden and down the hill he sat down on the grass, his arms encircling his knees.  
  
After a moment he took a sip of his coffee and then squinted in amusement at the yellow, bald-headed cartoon on the side of the mug. "I wonder what 'Doh!' means?" he muttered and then looked back out down the hill.  
  
"What the hell do I do now?  
  


* * *

  
Arriving back at the house had been chaotic. Cole shimmered in with Phoebe, Piper, Theresa and Molly all holding his arms. A second later Paige, Leo and Tom orbed in, clutching the still-unconscious figure of Tethos. Cole leapt to help and between them all they lowered him gently onto a sofa and covered him with a blanket.  
  
The former demon's skin was scorched in several places, and he was pale and breathed slowly. Cole gently tugged at the remains of his cloak, the hood coming away as he pulled it off. Bits of black cloth fluttered to the carpet and he scrunched the whole thing up, collected the fallen pieces and then turned for the waste bin in the kitchen. When he came back, he found everyone looking at the figure on the sofa.  
  
"Leo," asked Paige, "Are you absolutely sure that he's de-demonised?"  
  
The Whitelighter sighed and sat down on the edge of a chair. Rubbing a thoughtful hand around his chin, he looked up. "I can't feel anything demonic about him. Pure human as far as I can tell."  
  
"Yeah honey," drawled Piper, "But you couldn't feel anything demonic about Cole at first, either." She looked over at the demon and flicked an eyebrow. "Feel anything?"  
  
He shook his head. "He's not evil. I could feel it, even if it was buried pretty deep down in him. There's no demon left in him. That's not Tethos any more. It's Constantine." He looked at Leo. "I think you should find out what the Elders have to say about all this. Make sure you've got the prophecy and the Hammer with you; I don't think that we could fight off any of the Source's bounty hunters at the moment. I don't know about you guys but I'm exhausted."  
  
"Good idea," said Leo and, kissing his wife, he orbed out.  
  
Piper looked at the clock on the wall and gave a start. "Well, so much for me arranging breakfast while he's gone," she said wryly.  
  
Looking around, Phoebe blinked. "Wow, it's almost 1 in the afternoon. Well, we were all so hyped up to rescue you, I guess that we kind of lost track of the time."  
  
Piper sniffed the air. "I can tell. I hope you didn't leave any potions on the boil."  
  
Making a face, Molly shook her head. "Ah, no, but we did use up your stock of wolfsbane. And you're out of essence of garlic. I'll replace everything before we leave."  
  
Piper waved a hand. "Oh what's a little wolfsbane between witches." Then she paused. "I didn't know that we had any essence of garlic anyway. Garlic, yes, essence no."  
  
"I improvised," said Molly and then turned to look at the still-unconscious ex-demon on the sofa. "We need to keep an eye on him until Leo comes back."   
  


* * *

  
It was a low groan that first alerted them to the fact that Constantine, as they were just starting to refer to him, was waking up. He moved slightly, one hand emerging from under the blanket to rest on his forehead. There came another groan and then, with a suddenness that made them all jump back, he sat up, swaying slightly from side to side and staring blearily ahead of him.  
  
"I didn't know that oblivion came with a staircase," he said, and then frowned. Looking down he gasped as he looked at his hand. "It's not there anymore," he said in shock. Then he looked up and for the first time registered the presence of the others.  
  
"What happened? Why aren't I dead? Why can't I feel... it... anymore?" he demanded.  
  
"It?" asked Phoebe.  
  
"My... demon side. The dark part of me. I don't understand, did the Ritual reverse itself?" he asked, tried to stand up and then abruptly realised that he wasn't wearing anything beneath the blanket, sitting down again hurriedly.  
  
There was a sudden light in the corner of the room and Leo orbed in. He looked over at Piper questioningly and his wife shrugged. "He just woke up," she told him.  
  
Leo nodded and, walking over to the bewildered figure, squatted down in front of him. "Congratulations," he said, smiling. "You're human." Constantine stared at him, uncomprehending. "I'm what?" he asked eventually.  
  
"You asked the Hammer to destroy Tethos, and it did. Tethos – your demon side, the evil that was within you – has been destroyed. You're Constantine again. According to the Elders it's your reward for your time in hell. You've redeemed yourself so many times over, down the centuries. They know what you've done, the battles you've thought, the demons you've killed. They know all about Vienna and what you did in Dunkirk. They know all about the lives you've saved.  
  
"So a human life is their reward. You don't deserve death. You deserve to pick up your life again, to live as a human, to live and love and grow old and die." He put a hand on Constantine's shoulder. "There are more battles for you to fight, but you don't have to battle your dark side at the same time any more. Welcome back to the side of light."  
  
He stood up and then jerked his head at the others. Realising what he meant they quietly left the room, leaving Constantine to sit on the sofa alone, stunned, the tears gathering and running down his face as he wept quietly.  
  


* * *

  
"Penny for your thoughts," came a voice behind him, and he turned to look up at the yawning figures that walked up next to him.  
  
"Good morning, Leo, Cole. Just wondering what the hell I do next." He took another sip of coffee and then looked at the Whitelighter. "Your wife makes good coffee, by the way."  
  
Leo nodded as he sat down on one side of Constantine while Cole sat down on the other side. Both were also holding mugs of coffee. There was a brief silence.  
  
"What does 'Doh!' mean by the way?" asked Constantine after a while.  
  
"Ah," smiled Cole, "Homer Simpson. You have a new world of television to absorb. I know that you kept up with current affairs and so forth, but leisure programmes have exploded since you last trod the surface. Buffy, Babylon5, The Sopranos."  
  
Constantine looked baffled for a moment and then smiled. "I'm sure I'll get used to it."  
  
He looked back down the hill and then held his hand out, palm up. A small globe of fire appeared in its centre and rolled around in a circle before it flicked out. "My power is still there, the undemonic part at least. I'm not sure what I'm capable of, but I have a few ideas. I just don't know what to do next."  
  
"You're not still..."  
  
Constantine cut Cole off. "Suicidal? No. That ended once I felt that my demon side had gone. I'd forgotten how light it feels not to have to battle my dark side every day." He paused. "Sorry," he apologised. "I guess if I'm going to learn to live as a human again I have to learn tact again."  
  
Cole smiled wryly and drank some pf his own coffee. "No apology needed. I don't know what lies down my own road, but as long as I have Phoebe to remind me of the light, along with friends, maybe..." He shrugged. "There's a chance. You grabbed yours, even if it turned out differently from the way you figured. I need to grab mine."  
  
"You need to recognise it when it comes," added Leo quietly.  
  
There was another pause. Then Constantine said, heavily: "I know that I need to go home – just the once – and lay some ghosts to rest. I haven't been home in almost a thousand years. Perhaps they've put a bloody motorway through my old fortress, but..." he ran a hand through his hair. "I need to go home. After that... I have no idea."  
  
"Come with us," said another voice, again from behind, and the three turned to see Tom, with yet another mug of Piper's best coffee.  
  
"Now that we've had some sleep, we're going home, back to London. We always need good people at Room 42 of the British Museum. There are a lot of artefacts that we have no idea what to make of, that you could take a look at." He looked at Constantine. "Go home and then come and work with us for a while, until you sort yourself out."  
  
And then, smiling, he added: "Fel y afon i'r mor yw bywyd dyn."  
  
"Man's life is like the river flowing to the sea," translated Constantine, nodding. "You never know where the river will lead you." He stood up and nodded. "Maybe. Let me know where you and your friends work and... maybe."  
  
As they walked back to the house Cole paused.  
  
"By the way," he said, "What did you mean back at the warehouse, when you said that you'd added a few boobytraps to the shielding?"  
  
"Oh, that," grinned Constantine. "Just a few surprises for the source."  
  


* * *

  
"Nevermore."  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"Nevermore!"  
  
"Be silent!"  
  
"Nevermore."  
  
The Source glowered at the wreckage that was strewn across this throne room. His defeat at the hands of Tethos had been bad enough, but the old renegade had added some sort of rider spells to the shielding in that building. Once he had shimmered back to safety they had activated themselves and it had taken a full day to get them all snuffed out. Well, almost all of them, he thought, directing a glare at the raven that was sitting on the back of his throne. The wretched thing seemed invincible.  
  
"Nevermore," it said again, smugly, and wriggled its tail feathers in a way that suggested that it had just added to the small but growing pile of guano behind the throne.  
  
There was a noise behind him and the Source turned to see Cortalyn enter the room. Bowing he said: "The last pink anaconda has been caught, lord, the howler monkeys that ruined your throne room have all been destroyed and the indestructible rhino has been herded up to the surface."  
  
The Source clenched his fists and thunder cracked outside the window. He knew that Tethos was dead, he had felt the power of the Hammer from here, but this... humiliation was more than he could stand. Someone will pay for this, he thought savagely. Someone will pay. 


End file.
